Smoother Difficulty 1.4

[RushSecond]

The "problem" is that by reducing the AI bonus units, the balance in the mod to deal with the improved barbs is not working out well for the AI.

Can you elaborate? I haven't noticed the AI having issues with barbarians. Even on immortal, their production boost gets them a decent anti-barbarian force quickly enough. It's possible that some civs just don't make much military early for whatever reason, but that's a real AI issue and beyond the scope of this mod. I'd also rather not have to add another warrior to their starting lineup since that's backtracking on the point of this mod.

 

[Miravlix]

I have lost 3-4 civs to barbs on immortal. Since the barbs can kill me too, I guess it's fair, but that's a lot of opponents to loss.

 

[Atlas627]

How about a combat boost vs Barbs for the AI?

 

[RushSecond]

I have lost 3-4 civs to barbs on immortal. Since the barbs can kill me too, I guess it's fair, but that's a lot of opponents to loss.

Are you certain it's barbarians? I know sometimes you get a "civ has been defeated" notification, and in all my games that has always been indicative that a civ just took over a city-state, NOT that a civ died to barbarians.

I'm sorry that I'm so skeptical, it's just I have played multiple games with this mod (on Immortal as well) and never seen any AI civ lose to barbs.

How about a combat boost vs Barbs for the AI?

Though I could do that, if it really is an issue.

 

[Atlas627]

Are you certain it's barbarians? I know sometimes you get a "civ has been defeated" notification, and in all my games that has always been indicative that a civ just took over a city-state, NOT that a civ died to barbarians.

I'm sorry that I'm so skeptical, it's just I have played multiple games with this mod (on Immortal as well) and never seen any AI civ lose to barbs.

Though I could do that, if it really is an issue.

I am currently witnessing several enemy AIs being crippled by barbs. Greece lost its army to barbs, so it was easy for me to snipe their settlers and finally take Athens. Then China sent its army from far away to take out a CS near me, at which point I attacked China to get the CS from them. Barbs swarmed Xian and it started to rush its army back (to be fair, barbs also showed up suddenly on the other side of my empire too), so we made peace and I got to keep the CS.

However, I agree that the problem does not seem to have anything to do with your mod. The AIs are not lacking an army, though the army is certainly not as ludicrously huge as without your mod. However, the AI may need a ludicrously huge army to deal with barbs. Perhaps compensate with a buff to combat strength vs barbs?

 

[Littlebob86]

So how do I cut down the gold boost that the ai gets??? Lol, the xml is a little unclear to me!

 

[Lewi11]

So how do I cut down the gold boost that the ai gets??? Lol, the xml is a little unclear to me!
View attachment 458792

Wow! Maybe I need to use this mod. I've been using ai+ (which is great as it improves a lot of Ai decisions) but the AI have very few units and a lot of cities making them too easy to conquer.

Is larger armies a side-effect of the smoother difficulty mod?

 

[RushSecond]

Okay version 1.1 out, AI now have a small combat bonus vs barbarians based on difficulty. +4 vs barbs on deity doesn't sound like a lot, but when the barbarian strategy is typically "slam with a lot of units" the +4 bonus should compound on itself quickly and allow the AI to much more easily defend.

 

[Swiss Halberdier]

Thanks a lot for your nice mod! It's really a smooth concept!

I'm just curious to understand the vanilla and your settings/comments.

The bonus for the AI does start at the level Prince in vanilla and in your mod?

As you wrote in the XML file the comments like this:

<!-- Current science/culture boost: 0,0,0,0,8,16,24,32 -->
<!-- change to: 0,0,0,0,15,30,45,60 -->

Or should it be written in the comments like this as the bonus starts at Prince?

<!-- Current science/culture boost: 0,0,0,8,16,24,32,40 -->
<!-- change to: 0,0,0,15,30,45,60,75 -->

Thanks for your clarification about my confusion.

 

[RushSecond]

Yes, the XML comments are wrong. The bonus to AI always started at Prince, though I didn't realize it at the time. I will change those comments.

 

[Swiss Halberdier]

Thanks a lot for your work and your clarification!

 

[White Out]

This mod doesn't conflict with AI+ right? From what I'm reading the scope is simply buffs and changes to the bonuses on difficulties?

 

[RushSecond]

I've personally used both this and AI+ together and haven't noticed any conflicts. Nor should there be, as you said.

 

[Miravlix]

12 Civ map and I'm feeling the AI Civ's pressure me a lot to play better, to the point my latest game was down to king, with 11 AI Civs to compete against this mod seems to make them way better on purely keeping up with faith, culture, science. Unfortunately they don't compete on the military front (AI base game problem).

Fall Patch + this mod + larger maps seems to be a better difficulty solution than Firaxis base game.

Unfortunately the Fall Patch and/or my latest game starting strategies has prevented me from testing the immortal+ Barbarian issue, but hopefully the buff to AI barb fighting helped them.

 

[White Out]

12 Civ map and I'm feeling the AI Civ's pressure me a lot to play better, to the point my latest game was down to king, with 11 AI Civs to compete against this mod seems to make them way better on purely keeping up with faith, culture, science. Unfortunately they don't compete on the military front (AI base game problem).

Fall Patch + this mod + larger maps seems to be a better difficulty solution than Firaxis base game.

Unfortunately the Fall Patch and/or my latest game starting strategies has prevented me from testing the immortal+ Barbarian issue, but hopefully the buff to AI barb fighting helped them.

Are you using AI+?

 

[Atlas627]

I've loved playing with your mod, but it still doesn't account for something: the game is designed to snowball, and the AI never snowballs as intelligently as the human. So even if +30% science is enough to keep them teching with you now, it won't be next era. If its enough next era, its too much now (resulting in a similar "I have to catch up" feeling).

I have not found a function that would allow us to change the scaling on era. Have you found something like that?

 

[Miravlix]

I've loved playing with your mod, but it still doesn't account for something: the game is designed to snowball, and the AI never snowballs as intelligently as the human. So even if +30% science is enough to keep them teching with you now, it won't be next era. If its enough next era, its too much now (resulting in a similar "I have to catch up" feeling).

I have not found a function that would allow us to change the scaling on era. Have you found something like that?

You have to consider that the base game it self is a snowball, so making the AI create more cities, districts, tile improvement is going to make it snowball + getting the SD bonus.

 

[Atlas627]

You have to consider that the base game it self is a snowball, so making the AI create more cities, districts, tile improvement is going to make it snowball + getting the SD bonus.

True, but the amount of bonuses that the AI needs to be competitive in era A is not the same number of bonuses it needs to snowball at the same rate as the human, and thus be competitive in era B. It cannot both compete properly now and later without giving it a bigger boost in each era to represent the snowballing it missed out on.

 

[RushSecond]

I've loved playing with your mod, but it still doesn't account for something: the game is designed to snowball, and the AI never snowballs as intelligently as the human. So even if +30% science is enough to keep them teching with you now, it won't be next era. If its enough next era, its too much now (resulting in a similar "I have to catch up" feeling).

I have not found a function that would allow us to change the scaling on era. Have you found something like that?

A great idea, and I agree. I did some digging around and while there isn't an inherent function that gives the AI more bonuses based on era, you can still somewhat tediously make separate modifiers for each era and apply bonuses that way. And... I have done so for version 1.2 which I just released!

However, in the process of testing this new functionality, I discovered that bonuses that go over +100% actually only count as +100%, and do nothing beyond that. This whole time the +150% production I had claimed I had given to Deity difficulty actually was still just +100%. So I've reverted the production and gold scaling and instead given bigger combat boosts to Immortal and Deity as an alternate way to make war harder.

 

[MyopicCat]

However, in the process of testing this new functionality, I discovered that bonuses that go over +100% actually only count as +100%, and do nothing beyond that. This whole time the +150% production I had claimed I had given to Deity difficulty actually was still just +100%.

Really? How did you figure this out? Can we see it in any files we have access to?