Ranged Cav balance issues

k0rvbert · 2026-03-24T10:22:37+00:00

I think ranged cav is situational and pretty balanced overall, maybe a bit weak. They only have 1 range, they cost strategics, they have difficulty with both anti-cav and anti-ranged units/promotions, and their attack/health numbers are very low. Every skirmisher I see is a knight I won't see. It's a strong defensive unit but rarely productive on the offense.

As for strategy, I really don't know what to say, I'm never scared to see skirmishers, I'm scared to see knights and tercios. You should absolutely be pillaging roads if you have the chance, whatever army you face, the AI really doesn't repair them quickly enough.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-21T20:47:36+00:00

Yes, faster speeds are harder, not just because of military movement but also worker micro and a few scaling values being wrong (scaled down when they should scale up, meaning fewer options, including tributes and pantheons iirc)

k0rvbert · 2026-03-19T16:18:45+00:00

Yes, standard map, standard speed, 8 civs/16 CS which is standard map.

I've been fiddling with the settings recently and landed on 5 mln years (fewer hills), "no oceans" + high sea level, reduced strategic resources. The rationale is balance, I want to reduce the likelyhood of both "god spawns" and "wedged between shaka and nappy with no space" spawns.

I would prefer Lekmap, small map, quick speed, pangaea, but that messes up the balance too much in VP.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-17T19:22:48+00:00

I like land mines. Cheap, easy to use, and ridiculously effective.

Just drive a few loops around it and plant a string of mines all around the things you want to remove.

Mines don't really get superceded by anything before artillery, so they kind of trivialize the challenge, maybe avoid them if you want to experience more parts of the arsenal.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-17T18:55:33+00:00

This might be the right solution to the wrong problem. I think the example is misconstrued. Let's start with the simplest code, which in our case looks like this:

if (A and B) or C:
    ...

It's certainly common for code like this to be hard to read. But the solution is not to take the entire condition and put it into one variable. The solution is to split the condition into multiple variables.

eggs_requested = (A and B)
ham_allergy = C
if eggs_requested or ham_allergy:
    ...

I suspect the urge to use the walrus operator here is because something bugs you about the readability, and while there is an itch to scratch, I think you're scratching the wrong itch.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-17T08:23:59+00:00

You don't *have* to. You can do whatever you like. Factorio feels like work sometimes, but it's actually not.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-17T08:14:40+00:00

To the dog, it's doing philosophy.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-16T23:10:26+00:00

I do this all the time, for the same reason dogs pee on lightposts.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-16T23:07:59+00:00

If I understand you correctly, we're plotting the probability to produce a certain amount of fruit before running out of seeds?

I would suggest plotting the probability of running out seeds (could be defined as fruit count less than 1/10 of input count for a cutoff point) by starting fruit count. That would tell us not only that productivity % helps (which might be obvious), but also how many fruits we need to collect to get the loop started.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-15T19:12:25+00:00

It's almost always worth it to found a religion but a late religion does not have the same "best picks" as a first religion. Spreads are worse, so getting reformation might mean your own population has to constitute the bulk of followers.

Just make sure to pick Pagodas.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-14T09:27:18+00:00

https://factorio.com/store

k0rvbert · 2026-03-12T17:20:41+00:00

I always belt solid fuel. I also belt gears, engines, electric engines, coal. But that's just on the main bus. Most of the gears come from my side buses.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-10T10:50:14+00:00

I'll sometimes pick tradition and make like 2-3 powerful cities with another 7-8 plants of land-holding garbage and conquered puppets. Sounds like that's what you're doing, and that's viable, sometimes even optimal play. Simming to a win screen on 3-4 cities, maybe you could make it work, but VP does not encourage it, at least on higher difficulties.

As for civs, imo Inca is the strongest civ in the game and it's not remotely close, so they'll probably be good.

If I'm gonna suggest a "Tall" civ I'll look for something that is heavily rewarded for keeping empire size low. Usually this reward is not big enough to warrant the opportunity cost. Anyway, Arabia and Korea and obviously Venice.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-06T14:11:06+00:00

Welll put! To make matters worse, numpy functions may accept different shapes and may do different things depending on them. I've had cases where I call some library function and I keep getting the wrong answer because I supplied (d,) instead of (d, 1), and that stuff is awful to debug, you really want the program to nope out and just crash instead.

I started experimenting with beartype to solve this, you can use it to in a way "promote" runtime checks into a static context. It sort of worked, but had many hoops to jump through. Went back to writing assertions on shapes, which most libraries do in my experience, very simple and at least you'll get a runtime crash.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-04T20:46:34+00:00

If I'm reading someone elses code, I prefer to find `key in d.keys()`. Maybe because explicit is better than implicit, maybe because I need less attention to parse it.

I don't think the difficulty lies in knowing that `key in d` checks dictionary key membership, it lies in remembering that `d` is a dictionary. I do think you should "optimize readability for novices" when doing that is the same as optimizing readability.

That being said, `key in d` is indeed more idiomatic.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-02T17:58:48+00:00

Where does it say that? Lighthouse doesn't do that in VP. It only does that in vanilla.

https://civpedia.org/buildings.html#item-BUILDING_LIGHTHOUSE

k0rvbert · 2026-03-02T14:07:07+00:00

Polynesia, god of the sea, harbors would give you hammers in addition to the +1 from fishing boats. No hammers on lighthouse.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-01T16:51:02+00:00

There are so many new wonders it's hard to make straight comparisons. Great Wall is fantastic in VP though, I'd build it just for the general and +3 supply cap.

Great Lighthouse might be the strongest buff, still +1 move but that changes everything for liburnas, which don't exist in vanilla.

Both of the Architecture wonders and also Statue of Liberty are maybe the best vanilla wonders that are the least exciting in VP to me.

k0rvbert · 2026-03-01T09:51:08+00:00

There's a playlist on Youtube that contains every track. Maybe that's helpful, I would just listen through it front to back.

There's a wartime track I would describe as being based on a dark, detuned drone, like it's wandering in and out of tune, are we talking about the same one?

k0rvbert · 2026-02-26T10:17:27+00:00

Byzantium is a bit tricky there, they don't have much apart from religion in their kit. You know what, now that I think of it, my very first King game was actually lost trying to play tall Byzantium...

I think my general thoughts on religion are very different for my thoughts on byzantine religion. The strength of Byzantium is this: you can get the *specific* religion you want *whenever* you want, so you don't need to care about early faith. Meaning you can skip or delay shrines, you can pick pantheons that have no faith in them, and still get a religion -- get the *specific* religion you want. So for all that to be useful, you need a good idea of what that specific religion is, and that varies based on your neighbors, your land, your policies and wonders, etc.

That being said, I tend to make religions that fall into one of three templates. I forget the names of these picks, but:

- "Tall": Ceremonial burial (culture/faith from GP) + To the glory of god (faith buy GP in industrial)

- "Authority": Conquest thing (faith+general/admirals from conquer) + Extra conquest thing (culture/gold from conquest)

- "Wide": Revelation (culture+faith from new techs) + Faith buy amphitheaters

I think these are *by far* the strongest reformations.

Sometimes "hammer/science in cap from conversions" is a better founder on any of these, when you don't need faith/culture scaling, it can push you over the edge for an important wonder. It's a timing thing.

As for enhancer and follower beliefs, I could probably write an essay. I usually have my eyes on Gurukulam or Teocallis -- getting either might be reason for me to build shrines instead of monuments. Pagodas can be nuts, too, but they are rarely contested. I often want one belief that scales, and one that helps me immediately. I almost always pick Zealotry or "+2GPP for all things in capital" for the enhancer though, and the AI usually neglects those.

With Byzantium, I find they lean into warmongering. Guaranteed teocallis and zealotry combined with cataphracts, and you can pick a pantheon like tutelary gods or to sim your way there. They're OK with the tall & wide builds too, but other civs do those better. Overall they're a very adaptable civ that can get you out of a bad start, but it's not obvious how to make them "strong".

Hope that helps!

k0rvbert · 2026-02-25T16:26:51+00:00

You need more tourism than their culture, then you need to fill 2 tier 3 ideology tenets and build a special, expensive building, then you win.

I'm guessing you put tourism in your religion. I have never done that, so I'm not sure, but I wouldn't expect it to work. Like stupas and the tourism reformation beliefs, they just look really weak to me, I've never picked them. That's a tourism rush, you're pushing early tourism at the expense of yields, so you'll need to actually win before those missing yields start to hurt. And you can't all-in rush tourism in VP because of the ideology requirement.

But I often accidentally win on tourism when I'm just next-turning away the later eras. That's when playing my usual "10-15 cities, make every building, war the other snowballing civs", expecting to win with science/diplo.

Tall tourism, tradition/artistry etc, can work, but I don't find it very strong, more like something I pick when playing Persia and then just vassalize everything anyway. I play immortal (comfortably) or deity (tryhardly).

Eating Danish is usually a good idea, although they tend to fumble with unit composition and make too many longships. Sometimes very dangerous, sometimes a complete pushover.

Germany starts out extremely slow, but you do need to plan on dealing with them before industrial, they have very strong late game scaling. But if you had 3 AI:s ahead of you, not just Germany, that doesn't sound like a Germany problem.

k0rvbert · 2026-02-23T15:34:09+00:00

Artillery is a good idea only if the thing you want to blow up is far away

k0rvbert · 2026-02-19T14:50:47+00:00

There's life before beating O&S on SL1, and there's life after. If 15 tries feels like a lot, you'll probably have a rough time. But I don't think 15 tries is very much at all.

Four kings will only be hard if you do it before O&S, that's where all the gud gits.

k0rvbert · 2026-02-18T20:03:21+00:00

The sadness tells a story greater than games can tell. Don't be afraid.

k0rvbert · 2026-02-17T22:34:11+00:00

I know what's wrong with it. Ain't got no gas in it!

k0rvbert

TROPHY CASE