Question though, would you consider making another mod that has very gradual increases starting at settler? So for instance settler would be vanilla, no bonuses, and what you have as prince now would be say, warlord?
That's a good idea. Two problems could be solved by that; one, I could make Deity harder for those who think its too easy, and I could make King through Immortal manageable steps up to it for those who think the current Immortal too easy but Deity too hard. Something like...
[table="head"]Difficulty in new mod | Current difficulty
Settler | no bonuses for anyone
Chieftain | as hard as current Prince
Warlord | as hard as current King
Prince | as hard as current Emperor
King | as hard as current Immortal
Emperor | between current Immortal and Deity
Immortal | as hard as current Deity
Deity | harder than current Deity
[/table]
I'm not sure what I would call this, or if I should even make it a new mod or just make that the new Smoother Difficulty 1.4. If you are currently playing on a difficulty less than Prince, then Smoother Difficulty doesn't do anything for you anyway...
Second question, how does era scaling work? So ignoring Deity and Immortal... I understand how the bonuses to gold and culture work... how do the era scaling work?
Well say you are playing on Emperor, look at the table in my
first post here. In the Ancient era, all AI civs get 36% more science and culture, whereas without this mod they would have gotten +24%. As soon as anyone in the game reaches the Classical era, all AI civs will increase this bonus to 39%. Then when anyone gets Medieval era, they are increased again to 42%, and will increase by 3% every era after, until the Information era when it caps at +57% science and culture. This was a great suggestion by Atlas627 and it further helps the AI keep up throughout the game.
Third question.. and sorry for this becoming a bit of an inquisition lol... is it possible to scale back the monetary bonuses period? Like say if all I wanted to do with this mod was to give the AI a bonus to culture and research and perhaps a little production, is that moddable?
Well I didn't actually mess with production or gold either, it's still at their vanilla settings of +20% for Prince, +40% for King, etc up to +100% for Deity. Look here:
Code:
<!-- Current production/gold boost: 0,0,0,20,40,60,80,100 -->
<!-- can't change! turns out boosts over +100% doesn't do anything :(
<Update>
<Where ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_PRODUCTION_SCALING" Name="Amount"/>
<Set Extra="24"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Where ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_GOLD_SCALING" Name="Amount"/>
<Set Extra="24"/>
</Update>-->
</ModifierArguments>
Note that this xml code doesn't actually do anything because everything is surrounded by <!-- and --> comment syntax. It's ignored by the game when loaded. However you can add upate blocks after the --> bit that reduces the gold to 0, and and lowers the production from 20 to 10.
Code:
<!-- Current production/gold boost: 0,0,0,20,40,60,80,100 -->
<!-- can't change! turns out boosts over +100% doesn't do anything :(
<Update>
<Where ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_PRODUCTION_SCALING" Name="Amount"/>
<Set Extra="24"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Where ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_GOLD_SCALING" Name="Amount"/>
<Set Extra="24"/>
</Update>-->
<!-- New thing for White Out! Removes the extra gold from AI and lowers the production-->
<Update>
<Where ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_GOLD_SCALING" Name="Amount"/>
<Set Extra="0"/>
</Update>
<Update>
<Where ModifierId="HIGH_DIFFICULTY_PRODUCTION_SCALING" Name="Amount"/>
<Set Extra="10"/>
</Update>
</ModifierArguments>