Where do I settle? (K-mod)

[kazapp]

I don't know the K mod, but unless it is vastly different from the regular game, you need food - I wouldn't settle in place and lose the pigs.

What is 2L?

 

[Um the Muse]

I don't know the K mod, but unless it is vastly different from the regular game, you need food - I wouldn't settle in place and lose the pigs.

What is 2L?

k-mod is not much different from the regular game in the beginning. I gave it a try last night and didn't notice much, anyway.

You would have plenty of food in just about any city site that you want to settle. Don't forget that the rice will be irrigated when you build a farm, so it's 5 strength tile (adding food+hammers is fairly common to measure the strength of a tile).

2L = 2 left. I think that it's kinda weird to talk about cardinal directions when there's no North pole or prime meridian. It's not like you can get confused with the relative directions; everybody's map faces the same way.

 

[ahcos]

2L = 2 left. I think that it's kinda weird to talk about cardinal directions when there's no North pole or prime meridian. It's not like you can get confused with the relative directions; everybody's map faces the same way.

Erm, well okay, but we've started it that way and everybody understands it, why change it when it's just as short and simple?

 

[goldys_lackey]

What is 2L?

2 Leeward - a nautical term meaning in the direction of the wind.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

1W, for desert gold i would not give up so many forests and my strat. ressource (plains tile) ~~

^
A balanced compromise which allows for turn 1 settling. I would not have considered the potential of that plains tile.

 

[Archon_Wing]

How do you know it'll have a strat resource?

 

[vranasm]

How do you know it'll have a strat resource?

forests above strategy resources are cleared by start normalizer, so if you have start with a lot of trees and just 1 tile without and no visible resources there is good chance it will have strat resource.

That said, in this start position I think that the chance isn't so high as My makes it, since it seems like the forest was broken (there is a lot of tiles without forests)

 

[Um the Muse]

Hey, Archon Wing, are you going to continue this? I played a shadow game up to something like 200 AD if anybody is interested.

Spoiler :

I built a stack of elephants and catapults, but I haven't felt very inspired to finish this up when I noticed that AI cities usually have a single archer defense at this point. I declared war on Sitting Bull on a lark, even though I don't even know where he is. I don't have enough experience with Normal settings to know if this is typical of regular BtS, but that's crazy.

Honestly, easy wars bore me. If anybody wants to finish this, go ahead.

 

[Archon_Wing]

lol, I was waiting for someone to care. But K-mod's been updated and I'm not sure if anything will break. It shouldn't change too much though.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I did a quick playthrough and won domination or something in 1910; someone was refusing to cap only with a few cities left. Well, that and I play bad as usual. :S I also auto-workered which are a lot better in k-mod, but left something to be desired.

And then I let my capital stagnate for God knows how long. Oops.

Spoiler to 550 AD :

Food stuff ---> BW, and bronze is near. I rushed Cupac because he wasn't building anything but Louis was angry at me and actually managed to somehow encase me and blocking me from scouting. Honestly attacking Inca might not have been that bright. Oracle'd construction and cap'd him, then went for music and stuff.

Spoiler rest :

Peter teched like a beast for some reason and got machinery, philio, and a bunch of other good stuff, so I took my catapults to him; unfortunately his maces got the best of me. I did snag his capital and another city, so I waited for machinery myself and finished him off with trebs. Waited for rifling to kill Sitting Bull. Unfortunately, Justinian caught up with rifling (I always have trouble with the last guy in K-mod). I hit him with infantry but he took forever and a day to cap so the rest of the game was me batting him down with artillery while cav cleaned it up and some infantry..

Also, they used a spy to switch me into despotism. What the hell was that?

@ um

Spoiler :

Good job with the elephants; I wouldn't have thought of grabbing them.

 

[Um the Muse]

Congrats on your win

So, it looks both of us made what were basically standard plays (I'd considered trying to go for fast Feudalism, but I decided against it because of the elephants and because I hate getting the techs leading to Monarchy).

Did you notice any major changes due to the mod? From what I can tell, the game plays out pretty much the same in both of our games. It was cool to see that Justinian was smart enough to leverage Spi to convert you to despotism, though. Also, from the screenshot, it looks like Boudica really loved her cottages--it looks like they were allowed to fully develop. Whether she should've built them or not is open to debate, but at least she didn't compound her mistake by bulldozing them

Were you surprised by how long it took you to win? You are used to a much higher level of difficulty, after all.

Did you find culture to be more important in this mod than in the base game? That was one of things that I look forward to exploring the most. In real life, cities grew in size and influence by trade routes. This mod at least adds the influence part.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Unlike in Standard BTS, the AI will shoot for Rifling. It's just that a certain neighbor still had crappy AI. If you were playing this in vanilla, you'd be running into longbows near the end. Though it did take a while longer because K-mod seems to encourage earlier wars and it took me a while to get the techs I needed.

But that's an aspect I didn't really like. It's harder to tech and culture is nerfed. While the effects of culture are bigger, the raw culture needed for victories is harder, so peaceful ways of winning are less effective as Rep is a bit weak late game, plus the AI will crap on you if you don't hold up a military. In these cases I feel that getting quicker feudalism and getting machinery/engineering sooner than i normally would helps. I'm sure better players can achieve peaceful wins more easily, but it just seems like it's a lot harder to do.

On the other hand, vassalage is a really powerful civic, and serfdom isn't bad anymore. Also, State Property nerf means corporations are a bigger option these days.

Culture control is more important though, and cities further back can form a culture line, letting you flip enemy cities. Conquered cities are especially prone to flip now.

But yea, for whatever reason, K-mod is harder. You can still plow through individual AIs but there's always an AI near the end that gives you trouble. This is especially nasty on Continents maps, like this other Noble game I played where there was an AI that vassalized and conquered their entire continent as a 20 something city monster and then started to invade me. :S I even burned a third of his cities down, including his capital and a few nearby big cities yet he keeps on going. Does that even happen on Monarch on vanilla that often?

A few notes from this other game on continents:

Spoiler attacking from the east; his west is already a nuclear wasteland :

Spoiler his capital and core cities was here, now the vassals took the empty space :

War weariness sucked to say the least. I think I actually lost several rather large stacks and was like WTH where did it go?

I mean, this is normal speed and I lost 54 infantry, 55 tanks, 42 artillery, and 56 mobile artillery. And his casualties were worse, but that was thanks to nukes; he also shot a few at me but they didn't do too much.

 

[pixiejmcc]

forests above strategy resources are cleared by start normalizer, so if you have start with a lot of trees and just 1 tile without and no visible resources there is good chance it will have strat resource.

That said, in this start position I think that the chance isn't so high as My makes it, since it seems like the forest was broken (there is a lot of tiles without forests)

Can someone link me a post with more detail on this if one exists? Somehow I imagine DanF is in the know I've tried a few googles but without success.

 

[noto2]

Kmod is much, much harder than unmodded BTS. The AI plays drastically better in almost every way. It's more aggressive, hits you harder and actually fights much smarter, religions and wonders are finished significantly earlier, and the AI techs a lot faster. It's almost like moving up 1.5-2 difficulty levels, in a sense. It's really a fantastic mod the AI plays as good as a good human player in MP.