K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but that information is usually not available from the diplomacy screen anymore.

Yeah - not a great fan of the changes but at least they are consistent now. Either hide it everywhere or have it available everywhere.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I wish that the espionage system's balance was tweaked a bit so that active missions cost more points and passive missions were cheaper. As it stands right now it is very cheap and easy to use espionage to poison wells, foment anger, and blow up buildings, but it's relatively difficult to have enough points to grant vision of enemy territory. I think it should be the other way around - vision should be cheaper and actually blowing things up should be more difficult.

Yes, I agree 100% with this.

 

[Tigranes]

How is it more realistic? How can LOCAL activity require more "espionage" effort than civ-wide intelligence gathering? To poison well -- you just need someone sneaking into the city and poison it. For passive missions -- you learn about some federal level secrets without risking to get caught or thwarted. Sure it would require more espionage points at any day of the week.

I'll tell what is the MOST unrealistic espionage option -- influence religion/civic. I mean come on! Can you imagine you send a spy to Saudi Arabia and they suddenly change official religion to Christianity? Or North Korean spy coming to US and changing Civic to Police State? Those silly options has to be either banned or require legendary amount of points.

 

[Yudishtira]

I'll tell what is the MOST unrealistic espionage option -- influence religion/civic. I mean come on! Can you imagine you send a spy to Saudi Arabia and they suddenly change official religion to Christianity? Or North Korean spy coming to US and changing Civic to Police State?

So who do you think changed the US into Police State? Ironically given your comments, it was probably a Saudi spy. That would also explain why the US sent Saudi stormtroopers to crush the democracy movement in Bahrain.

 

[Todd Hawks]

Politics aside, you are not sending "one spy". As everything in CIV, espionage missions are highly abstracted and represent an operation lasting years and involving many people. As such it is entirely possible to influence a foreign state. I cannot comment on the cost of such a mission wrt the other missions in the game since I rarely (read: never) actually use it. Mostly because the civ I use it on can and usually does just switch back sooner than later to whatever religion/policy they had before.

Edit: Also thanks for the info on the "we have too much on our hands right now" message. Can you tell us more about when exactly we see the message? You make it sound like we get it when an AI is planning an attack on someone else but not when it is planning an attack on ourselves? Wouldn't that mean that I can feel safe whenever I see that message?

Also, I want to take the opportunity to once again thank you for the mod, Karadoc, I am continually surprised at how good the AI has become. And I hope you continue development!

 

[Lone Wolf]

Or North Korean spy coming to US and changing Civic to Police State?

Interpret it as staging a coup with the backing of a foreign power.

 

[Tigranes]

So who do you think changed the US into Police State? Ironically given your comments, it was probably a Saudi spy. That would also explain why the US sent Saudi stormtroopers to crush the democracy movement in Bahrain.

Have you seen a Police State in USA? When? Where? If Saudies even generate Espionage points they direct it all against Israel and Iran, not USA. Bahrain has a Suni-Shia problem, and in terms of BTS -- Bahrain is a vassal state of Saudi Arabia.

Please tell me any historical example of one state changing religion of another state via spies! Or even any significant civic change.

 

[shulgi]

Have you seen a Police State in USA? When? Where? If Saudies even generate Espionage points they direct it all against Israel and Iran, not USA. Bahrain has a Suni-Shia problem, and in terms of BTS -- Bahrain is a vassal state of Saudi Arabia.

Please tell me any historical example of one state changing religion of another state via spies! Or even any significant civic change.

This is getting pretty off topic, sorry for continuing anyway

Bahrain is a US interest because of the US Navy 5th fleet, everything the Saudis do there is done with US support.

Picking on the US is rather obvious because they are the biggest bully. on the block these days. This really isn't the place for too much arguing on the subject but I guess that's why this discussion has not happened yet and nothing has changed.

I guess you could say it's "diplomacy" and not spies but the difference is not so stark as would be expected. Here's a short intro for the US, Iran 1953 is probably the best known that didn't directly cause a war.. A lot more could be said for the way colonial powers manipulated their way to power all around the world.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions

Even the way the USSR instituted largescale religious changes in Afghanistan was done through diplomacy and carried out by the new "civic" in charge. Of course that reverted back to something even more extreme than before.

Again, sorry. This doesn't have any direct bearing on k-mod. /end

 

[noto2]

@noto2, I think you're looking for the option "no unit cycling" in the standard options menu on the "game" tab. Tooltip text for it is "no automatic cycling between units".

Well I do want unit cycling, though, I just wish the cycling was smarter. If I have 8 units on one tile, and I select 3 and move them, why doesn't the UI stay on that tile and ask for orders for the remaining 5 units, why does it literally whip me across the globe and ask for orders for some caravel in the ocean? I can get to the caravel later....

 

[noto2]

I still say passive espionage missions should be cheaper and active ones should be more expensive. I won't even bother to wade into your debate about the "real world" this isn't the place for it. Simply from a gameplay perspective I can easily have enough points to blow up half the tiles in my neighbour's empire without trying to generate EP's, but I really have to try to focus on espionage to actually reveal things....basically isn't that espionage's most basic mission? Again, I think having to spam spies and send them into your neighbour's land is a bad alternative. Espionage's passive missions can be very useful - I can see what units my neighbour has and where they are deployed, but having that kind of information is quite rare in the game and takes a huge amount of EP's. But then, for almost no EP cost, I can go and revolt every single city I'm attacking...literally every one, it's not expensive, or in a tight space race I can revolt part building cities indefinitely, I've even had games where a civ was only 5 turns from a culture victory and I delayed it by 40, 50 turns just from revolting a city every single turn...because it's so cheap to do so. I think that's bad balance. I really think the active missions should cost more and the passive ones cost less.

 

[Charles555nc]

Happy Christmas Eve guys,

I made a long post about all the horrible/illegal things the US government has done in South America and the Middle East but I guess its really not the place for that stuff. And America is definitely getting closer to a police state, nothing but talk about disarming the public while the rich mayors like Bloomberg have about 10 armed bodyguards. People forget about Kent state shootings where the government shot the unarmed public...

I like the idea of passive missions being slightly cheaper, but I dont know whether I think the active missions should be more expensive or else I'd never use them.

On another note, anyone think a colliseum should let you make 1 citizen into an engineer specialist? Even in exchange for a small shield increase on the building...idk I just thought it would an interesting change.

 

[shulgi]

then, for almost no EP cost, I can go and revolt every single city I'm attacking...literally every one, it's not expensive, or in a tight space race I can revolt part building cities indefinitely, I've even had games where a civ was only 5 turns from a culture victory and I delayed it by 40, 50 turns just from revolting a city every single turn...because it's so cheap to do so. I think that's bad balance

Kudos for making good decisions with your spies when confronted with culture and space wins but wow this sounds ever so broken.

Here's an article on the espionage with code detailed, I've yet to dig up the file and see if anything changed since the article's date.

Depending on how much the AI already knows what you are doing, how much it can see your terrain because it is the computer than I agree with lowering passive costs.

Happy holidays all

 

[Tigranes]

There was so much talk about AI being MUCH better in K-Mod. Perhaps, one has to finish statistically significant amount of games to feel it. But it does not take too long to spot all the old AI stupidities even with the very first game.

So here is a situation, and you are Barbarian AI. If unlike the Salvation Army you want to do the most evil -- what would you undertake?

There is no way I can reach to my city in time to defend it. That lousy Warrior could just burn my newborn city. But instead he does I don't know what:

Perhaps Barbarian AI and AI are different things, but I don't see much improvement over regular vanila AI stupidities, sorry

 

[Tigranes]

I still say passive espionage missions should be cheaper and active ones should be more expensive.

40 turns of revolting is overkill, certainly needs to be addressed. It is strange your numerous spies never got thwarted. But this does not mean that passive missions need to be cheaper. You get the benefit of the passive mission without the risk of active mission to loose your Spy!

 

[keldath]

hey all,

long time since i posted here,

i see the ai auto play has ben mpved to cheat mode,

the one quation - is how to activate cheat mode?...?

and how to turn it on? ctrl+ shift + x?

 

[Mattygerst]

Perhaps Barbarian AI and AI are different things, but I don't see much improvement over regular vanila AI stupidities, sorry

Tigranes: karadoc please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the AI in K-Mod loses the cheat ability to see the entire map. It is placed in fog of war the same as a human player in unexplored land. With that said - it is possible that the barbarian warrior simply did not see the city. Based on where he walked - he probably saw the one axman and moved toward it to engage as a barbarian warrior should. Just because you can see the map, doesn't mean the AI can.

 

[Charles555nc]

I think Karadoc has mentitioned that barbs are supposed to be, well simplistic, they arent another civilization, they just run around try to plunder stuff in front of their face.

If I could suggest, please dont hint that because the barbs are simplistic that kmod isnt the best ai mod out there, cause it is... Idk about you but I dont want master strategy barbs spawning all around me...it wouldnt feel right for the game imo.

 

[satrapper]

@ keldath

cheatmode -
in the civilizationIV.ini:

; Move along
CheatCode = chipotle

aiautoplay is ctrl+shift+X
changeplayer is ctrl+shift+L

should only work in single player games

also, are you still working on dawn of overlords merge with k-mod?

 

[keldath]

satrapper,

hi , and thank you for the help.

well...funny, i didnt know some1 still remembers my mod. i acctaully did versions of doto with kmod, but i stopped at some point cause it wasnt good on multiplayer, i have some files in my cpu.

for now i planned on maybe renew my work on song of the moon with kmod.
or i dunno, maybe do a doto on kmod?

*****
karadoc, have u ever thought of making autoplay on mp games? the auto play in rev dcm is built for mp tests.
just a thought.

 

[Gavagay]

There was so much talk about AI being MUCH better in K-Mod. Perhaps, one has to finish statistically significant amount of games to feel it. But it does not take too long to spot all the old AI stupidities even with the very first game.

So here is a situation, and you are Barbarian AI. If unlike the Salvation Army you want to do the most evil -- what would you undertake?

The barbarian warrior definitly can't see your city on this screenshot. The city was founded only few terns ago and I somehow doubt it would be undefended if barbarians have already scouted it.
Therefore, there is actually no reason for the warrior to move to this square.