Mod À la carte #1: Tile Yields Mod v7 by lichen8566

[DosCiv]

interesting about the AI being so scared of the water. ive seen no playthroughs yet with any air units, wonder if the computer finds them easier to understand.

 

[Isikien]

Spoiler :

Man I'm tired. Too much working. WORKING WORKING WORKING.

Tech tree ladies. Sci theory in 3 turns. I have no idea what to do next.

I love my military advisor.

'I THINK YOU SHOULD DESTROY (X) CIV BECAUSE YOU'RE AWESOME IZZY. DO IT IZZY, KILL THEM ALL IZZY'

that's the only two recaps you're getting sadly. I'm too lazy to screencap more. But all you need to know is, I have Hiwa's island in puppet mode and well...

You'll see when i play the next round

 

[Isikien]

Spoiler :

This set is brought to you by WAR. A delicious cut of WAR sandwiched by two slices of DESTRUCTION AND CHAOS, garnished with THE END OF DAYS and served with a tall frosty glass of GLOBAL DISCORD MIXED WITH STRIFE GRENADINE AND UNCLE ALEXANDER'S WORLD FAMOUS WHISKEY (42%)

This showed essentially to me that the AI, despite it producing more, has a long way to go when it comes to standing up to runaway civilisations.

For example. Me.

Seoul apparently was at war with me due to being allied with Hiwa at the time of his destruction. The CS is a mile away sitting on a one tile island west of my newly aquired land.

I declare peace with it. What is the point in actually taking it? Seriously, it has Whales, big whoop.

A turn later I gain a much appreciated wonder, from both a British standpoint and a strategic standpoint

I really don't understand why Big Ben of all things reduces the cost of buying stuff.

And this segment is possibly the funniest yet in terms of global politics:

Will somebody, ANYBODY, please tell me what is going on? Who is causing this, why is Arabia accuring declarations from everybody? Have you people EVER heard of an embassy?

While the east goes up in flames, the west prospers, starting with the discovery of scientific theory. Unsurprisingly I have two sources of coal, though I settled on one, like the moron I am.

I started on steam power next.

My priorities are in this set:

1: Modernise my army
2: Give Ghandi a spanking
3: Annex Hiwa's cities one by one and make them useful to China

3 was quite the cakewalk. My Civ rarely went into severe unhappiness and the puppet states were actually BUILDING happiness buildings, which was nice to see.

I made a temporary alliance with Dublin, purely because I felt like it and I was interested to see what would happen when they started giving me units

There was another reason as well. I was trespassing a couple of times when I sent my military back to my capital, something I'm not keen on doing to CStates seeing how formidable they are during hostilites. Can you believe it? I felt guilty about TRESPASSING.

Oh guess what?

This is getting considerably funnier and funnier every time he comes a-knocking. Funnier yet is the fact I keep telling him he will pay, which only serves to ruin our relations even more. I think most of this game is defined by Alex constantly slagging me off, only for me to respond ominiously that he will regret making such claims.

I grab steam power and advance to the industrial era. At this point, I begin making another trade with America. I need to start annexing those southern cities a lot faster, and excess smilies will allow me that:

I also build this:

For the free GG of course. My army is deserving of good strategists.

A great merchant is born on turn 249! Again due to the world not being an overall 'safe' place, I build another customs house:

Haha, that's a cool modern placeholder for the Great Merchant.

Sorry, I was distracted. So I build a customs house:

I have to admit, gold flow is being weird during this set. It kept fluctuating between below 100 gpt to above 100 gpt every time I started a new turn. I can only guess that some of the city governers are playing silly buggers with my citizen allocations. I will check it out in greater detail if I get the time.

Some good information of the military ratings of the other civs:

I think the bottom three have finally worn each other down. Meanwhile, everyone else seems to be embarking on an arms race, including Washington, who suspiciously has not yet waded into world politics, yet appears to be building military at a steady rate.

I grab replaceable parts, a vital tech for my situation and begin upgrading my rifles to infantry on turn 252. I change my tech path to go for electricity, so I can get me sum destroyers as well:

My curiosity about Ghandi however gets the better of me. I mean the guy seems to have a pretty strong military rating. So I send a frigate his way:

He's no Iroqouis but at least Ghandi is actually in possession of a military. This coupled with his advantage in technology and he may pose a bit more of a threat. It will take me a while to get ready for war, so he may prove to be stronger the next time I get a sit-rep on him.

The AI shows that it has inherited the dementia of its Civ4 incarnation on this particular turn:

Chicagie is looking pretty cold.

And something rather horrifying occurs:

Catherine really bit off more than she could chew this time. Looks like Arabia is mopping up. Will she be eliminated I wonder?

Ghandi then appears and shows his full grasp of the situation that lies between China and India:

Of course I'm not denying the bald one has a point; I've always considered myself to be a sociopath masquerading as a cultured and communicative fellow.

With a wave of a hand, I dismiss his clueless ambassador, who is probably wondering, as he walks slowly out of my throne room coloured with a macabre red and a regal purple, adorned with war murals of the previous war, just what my sideways smirk was about when I told him:

'History has many reoccuring delights in store for men such as Ghandi, and a man who believes the pen is mightier than the sword has to realise that a man cannot write or speak when his voice box and his hands are missing'

Speaking of the might of words, observe what is easily the best bit of this segment:

A great scientest is born. Around the same time, a new policy is unlocked specially for this occassion:

Yes guys, I am about to triple bulb:

A nice big haul. All of which was free, courtesy of one social policy and one GS.

Also, the Arabs continue to stomp all over Catherine.

Part 2 of this set coming soon

 

[Isikien]

Spoiler :

I also find one more CS late game:

Man I should really explore a little more.

268 turns in and my dickhead senses are tingling:

NOOOOOO. REALLY!? Because I was JUST thinking the same thing about you.

Why would you willingly contact me, to tell me to go away when it was you who struck up the goddamn conversation in the first place?

Stop... god stop... I've had my quota of 'moron' for this turn set from Bhaldi, I don't need you adding to it.

With that out of the way, I build TEH STATUE OF LIBERTIES:

Turns out I'm running enough specialists for it to be worth it. Yes I am building wonders for specific strategies and not just wonderspamming.

Ghandi, as I predicted, also upgraded to riflemen recently. I only have a slight military lead on him in terms of land units, but I don't see any navy, which will effectively screw him like it did to Hiwa.

More AI silliness:

Askia is so rich he has no clue on what to do with it, which doesn't help his backward situation. The rest of the scores give a better indication of who could possibly trounce who, Washington again sitting humbly near the top of the ladder.

Another GS was born in this segment, netting me the Telegraph as a tech. Dublin was also giving me stupid units since they're a Militaristic CS and I was allied with them. Not because they were outdated, but they were so stupidly modern that they had no function. Case in point:

• An anti-tank gun
• An Anti-Air gun

Why Dublin, why?

Vienna asks me for help against Songhai on the same turn I got that AA gun. So:

I can only imagine how ******** that conflict would be. A weapon designed to shoot down things that fly, against a man who most likely has only just researched the techs required for pikemen.

IMA READY FOR WAR:

Let's begin sailing to India.

I also get a much needed wonder:

This'll greatly bolster my happiness.

And on turn 284, my body is ready:

Ghandi graciously allows me to declare war on him without asking questions as to why there are a ton of ships sitting on his borders:

NO U.

I began the war in the same way I began my second conflict, bombarding with sea units. Under this covering fire my other units make a landing:

Once I wore him down enough, my destroyers moved on Dehli, shelling the crap out of it, while my soldiers marched on Mumbai:

My happiness hits a low, so I dialed up Rashid to trade Dyes for Pearls. He also wished me luck in the war. That made me chuckle. It appears Ghandi isn't very popular.

I split my forces in two, the bulk moving on Dehli and just three units moving north to Vijyanagaraarararararar with a GG.

Alex, now eagerly watching from the sidelines, asks me in a hopeful manner:

Basically, one of Alex's cities is very close to Ghandi's capital. Alex, getting excited for a moment, thinking I was game for a scrap with him, immediately dialed me up and called me out for amassing my forces outside his borders, to which I replied with 'No you jumped up prat of a Greecian, stop talking to me, I will declare war on you when I'M ready'

The Delhi counter is mine

The other city above soon fell.

Number of civilizations trolled: 2

Moral of the story kids? Don't anger a dragon without flameproofing yourself first.

Recap next post

 

[Kwibuss]

Aaah great work! Fun writing style! And interesting because it gives an insight in mods.

Great stuff Isikien!

 

[Isikien]

The steamroller's starting to come out. My city sizes are skyrocketing. I am embarking on what is essentially a killing spree and I'm building wonders unopposed. Something is definately amiss. If the screenshots haven't convinced you that the AI on equal footing on Prince is rubbish, then let me tell you now, it surely is.

I wrote this in another thread, so I'm going to shamelessly copypaste it into this thread. It's about the AI and how I feel it should function:

I think the problem people are still finding, rather than a bunch of AIs coded with strong preferences towards either cultural, monetary, scientific or military ambitions, the AI has been painted with one aggressive brush. There has been a thread about this here, which is worth a read.

This isn't too much of a problem, it's actually quite nice since in CivIV it made the AI so predictable. Had Mansa Musa next to you? Be sure to beeline Aesthetics and trade for every tech he has, then once you outtech him, vassalise him. Mansa's not too good at building a military, so that's no problem.

This made the AI very predictable. It's good for games played on higher difficulty since knowing how to predict an AI's attitude will enable the player to manipulate it easier, thus leaving most of the challenge with compensating for the higher handicap and empire managment.

Essentially it's swung from one extreme to the other. And because of the vagueness of the diplomacy system, it really makes the AIs look silly and irrational. I don't mind AIs being more protective and much more aggressive in their diplomacy and use of military, but they need to code it so that if the AI is pursuing an alternative strategy (such as Ghandi pursuing cultural with three specialised cities suddenly declaring on a weaker ramsesses and ruining his strat), they don't get sidetracked by war.

War is still a massive investment in this game as it was in previous games. They should have culture or diplomacy focused AIs:

• Seek protection from stronger empires with defensive pacts
• Have them stop paying attention to the fact that other civs are weaker than them and just treat everybody as a potential partner for bargining with (i.e. if they're pursuing a more peaceful victory, then give them immunity to the generalised code that makes them needlessly aggressive)

Why does this apply to this game? Well, the AI intelligence will, ye sadly, apply to most of my future games. This means that in terms of mods I will be looking at AI and diplomacy modifications to see if someone can botch together a definitive fix. That is until an official patch is released regarding those factors.

To say the very least, the AI is at least entertaining and this particular game is fun to play, but only in the sense that it has obtained a state of deathmatch nirvana, where resources are so plentiful that the only things on MOST of the AIs' mind are 'WAR' and 'HATE PEOPLE WHO ARE WEAKER'. I will unmarkedly win this, purely because I am whipping the AI in its only field of expertise.

In other words, this mod is making the AI much less subtle than it already was. Ghandi in particular shows up in stark contrast to the rest of the world, who had three cities and a very strong bent on wonderspamming (but failing miserably), as well as having many academies (The great scientest's special building). The rest of the world stay at a sociopathic level of 'KILL' with a minority staying fairly placid. (Washington, who preferred focusing on scientific interests and is incredibly mild mannered)

This basically brings me to this conclusion:

The AI needs to have more variety in terms of its approach to victory. It should only be declaring war at an alarming rate if its goal is domination.

I'm all for having randomly scaling 'flavours' that have an upper limit and lower limit respectively for each leader. This makes each leader predictable enough to formulate a strategy against it (such as in CivIV), but unpredictable enough to make each game more exciting without being frustrating.

But some changes really need to happen:

1. The AI needs to have an overarching strategy. It should always be its core objective and everything must lead towards it. This as I understand is difficult to code, but necessary for a more varied game
2. With this strategy in mind, if it is a peaceful one, it has to stop declaring war left, right and centre, regardless of its military advantage over its fellow civ

 

[Civ'ed]

Isn't it always fun when Ghandi makes the most ironic statement ever? Or does he mean it? We will never know, as he always dies when he says that.
Terribly good game!

 

[Isikien]

I will update soon. Blame Minecraft along with my massive work schedule for lack of commitment. I just need to do a write up of the segment

 

[Vanni]

I will update soon. Blame Minecraft along with my massive work schedule for lack of commitment. I just need to do a write up of the segment

Sweet Jesus...is everyone addicted to that game now!? I have yet to play it cause it doesn't look like my kind of game. Is it fun? Do you do anything aside from build stuff?

 

[Isikien]

Sweet Jesus...is everyone addicted to that game now!? I have yet to play it cause it doesn't look like my kind of game. Is it fun? Do you do anything aside from build stuff?

Basically, it's... survival sandbox.

The sandbox part of it involves crafting gear like pickaxes, woodaxes etc, harvesting blocks and building GRAND CREATIONS

The survival part of it is probably more evident when you go exploring or when you just start the game. Basically the game has monsters but they spawn only in darkness, which means when night falls you have to be in a shelter of some sort. And it has to be well lit if it is particularly big otherwise monsters will spawn in it.

Over time you may get over the tension that comes with night falling but I never do. I find the monsters massively terrifying.

There are things like underground cave systems and dungeons that host rarer minerals and materials such as diamond

Just google it. Notch (the maker) is in the process of updating it at haloween.

Also, inb4viral

 

[Isikien]

Alas I did not finish this and I doubt I will.

My apologies. CiV was patched and I wasn't sure if saves were backwards compatiable.

However at some point I will do another Mod playthrough, when I get the time during christmas holidays.

 

[YourDeath/TSAR]

goot vork!!

 

[THE ONLY]

Hello

This is a planned series based on playing games with user created modifications.

The point of this series is NOT to play MASSIVELY AMAZING GAMES WHERE I PLAY ONE HANDED UPSIDE DOWN BALANCING ON A UNICYCLE AGAINST 6 DIETY LEVEL AIS TEAMED AGAINST ME WHILE BEING ATTACKED BY BATS IN REAL LIFE. Rather it is to sample mods that people have put the effort into making.

The first one I'm trying out was in fact one of the first I saw posted in the Mod component forums. lichen8566 apparently, within days of the SDK being released, posted this mod at lightspeed, then proceeded to update it at an inhuman rate.

The mod changes tile yields and adjusts them close to their civIV variants. The recent version as of writing this is version 7, and the full changelog is as follows:



It's a pretty vague description in some respects but for many of ya it will be more evident if you play it how the game has been changed. In this respect it is said that this mod makes the AI tech and build faster.

You can grab it from here

The point of this series is NOT to play MASSIVELY AMAZING GAMES WHERE I PLAY ONE HANDED UPSIDE DOWN BALANCING ON A UNICYCLE AGAINST 6 DIETY LEVEL AIS TEAMED AGAINST ME WHILE BEING ATTACKED BY BATS IN REAL LIFE. If only my sdk opened up I would balance everything this civ has to offer.