@Arcadian
No, they replace them. The mod is meant to round out the difficulty over time, so all the starting bonuses are removed. Any values mentioned are replacements to the original settings.

Are the extra bonuses on top of the default ones? That would mean the AI get 55% extra production and gold on King. They only need a bonus per era to keep up, since they are already strong in the beginning.

Hello! This is an excellent mod. May I ask if it is compatible with RomanHoliday's AI Rework Mod and Balance and Resource Tweaks Mod?

People need to remove the <AffectsSavedGames> line from the MODINFO file so that saved games will retain the mod. I don't know when it started but apparently this is the fix for mods not loading on saved games.

Haven't checked this in a while.. People having trouble with the mod not working seem to be experiencing issues with mod conflicts or something like that. All this mod really does, if I recall, is remove some things in an XML file to remove AI starting units and such, and modify another XML file to add per-era bonuses for AI. I'm not sure how any game update would conflict with it to such a degree that it breaks the game completely. A possible issue is that a file may need to be altered to be flagged that it works for certain expansions - I do remember that cropping up in the past and all I had to do was add a line that says it's compatible.

It appears that there are still some people using the mod just fine, which is a good sign.

this is all ive ever wanted

I must say, this is EXCELLENT!

smoothing out the AI bonuses is a brilliant idea, and though I have not tested it yet, the premise is very promising! I always disliked that AI only got their massive bonuses in the beginning, making it impossible to build early thematic wonders, while making the end game a tedious slog when you've caught up and were ahead.

with this mod, hopefully, I have a fair chance of building that Wonder, while also having a more interesting end game!

Thanks a lot for the work you put into this!

Despite other comments, to my surprise the mod does seem to work, September 2024. Played a few turns, saved the game, exited and loaded it up without any issues. I only have the base game and do not have any other unofficial mods installed.

Sad to see this is not working. It is perfect for what I want.

Was a good mod. No longer works after Winter 2023 Patch... Initial startup will work, but breaks when you try to load save games.

does not work can't loud save games

Mod sounds good, will it be updated?

Doesn't work in MP TT

does the mod work?

I like the direction of this mod, but I'd like to see the AI bonuses get buffed. Eight difficulty levels is a lot. Deity was already too easy past the early rush. Even easier now. I'm pretty mediocre and careless with this game. If I'm bored in deity, can't imagine the experience for actual good players.

This makes the game so much easier it's not interesting to play any longer, I've already conquered half of the world with just Montesuma warriors. I'd like AI to have no starting bonus, but much better handicap for AI in terms of resources, gold, etc.

Not working in Dec 2020

actually not working

I agree they need some sort of starting bonus, particularly to military. I've found they tend to quickly exhaust themselves on each other or barbarians (I've actually seen Alexander be brought to his knees by 1 Barbarian camp on Deity). Isolated civs seem to do much better, up to keeping pace with me so given they're taking so much trouble from barbarians, perhaps an extra warrior and/or spearman depending on the difficulty would be good. Or even a vs Barbarian only combat bonus.

Thanks for making this! I was looking for a difficulty mod that makes the AI start on the same playing field and then progressively get more bonuses to keep up with my empire development. This mod really excels in the first goal, though I do share the feeling that I no longer feel any challenge even on Diety. I can be way ahead even in medieval era, and the AI never catches up after that. Is it possible to improve this mod by making Diety harder, or maybe create 1-2 additional difficulty levels beyond Diety?

@ZCY4014 Thanks! Yeah, that was the main idea of the mod when I started working on it.

As for people saying it's too easy - it's not meant to make the game *harder*, per se. It's mostly to give some extra challenge in the long run without the AI just getting a free headstart. The AI are going to be weak against early game military rushes (and aggressive playstyles in general) still.

This mod makes AI not too powerful in the beginning. Awesome!

I think it's a bit too easy, I played on Deity on Duel map and it was super easy.

Hey, love the mod but I find it needs some tweaks atm. I am playing at deity with absolute ease and without necessary building a big army, I have the highest military strength, in other words the AI isn't getting enough military units. Otherwise love the rest!

Thanks a lot for this.

Is there any way to make the starting bonus production and gold a toggle? i.e. I want them to get bonuses as the game progresses, but I don't want them to start out with flat production and gold bonuses.

Amazing mod!
Thank you very much!
Do you consider creating ver 2 and 3 with different modifiers?
Example:
"extra production and gold per difficulty level above Prince" 15% --> 10%
"more food, production, and gold per new era per difficulty level above Prince" 2% --> 1%
"extra science and faith per new era per difficulty level above Prince" 3% --> 2%

@Jamifa Awesome :) I know that I could have done the change myself but I play a lot of multiplayer and having everyone make the change would have been a little troublesome. Looking forward to trying a culture victory with the new changes!

Ok so I actually did update it with the 2% change since I'm playing with a friend with the same mod

@Bahkja Now that I think about it, the culture victory has always been one of the hardest to get in the game (at least for me) anyway, but I don't usually play culturally. You make a good point, though. Since I'm working on my own game right now and not really doing much with this mod anymore, and since it's such a small change, it would probably be easier to just let people mess with the code for that. All you'll need to do is locate the location of Civ 6 mods in your Steam game directory (steam/steamapps/workshop/content/289070 for me) and go through the folders until you find it (probably 1561826220 to match the URL - my copy is in My Documents). Then open DifficultyMod.sql in something like notepad, find the 4th instance of "CULTURE_SCALING_CLASSICAL", which is where the number settings are and change those values there - the first value should be the inverse of the second one to make the numbers work right. (-3, 3) (-2, 2) Then just make sure it saves and re-open the game.

@Jamifa I'm a big fan of this mod and I think it does a great job at making the AI more fair to play against. Here's some feedback I had for deity:

Due to the way cultural victories work, it becomes harder to win as opponents gain more culture (culture increases domestic tourists, which in turn means you need more visiting tourists). In every game at least one AI snowballs in culture near the late game. With an extra 3% per difficulty per era, by my calculation in the atomic era the AI is receiving +72% culture, compared to 32% in vanilla.

Whereas high science and faith can be countered (sabotaging spaceports, denouncing heretics, etc), any domestic tourism increase is permanent and cannot be reduced. Oftentimes I will need 500+ visiting tourists to win, at which point I normally have to switch to domination.

I'd like to suggest the culture scaling to drop down to 2%, which will still keep the AI competitive civic-wise but reduce the enormous passive tourist generation they get.

@lalitinthesun Changing "extra" for the "YIELD_SCALING_ERA" variables will work, yes. Just make sure to reload the game, and possibly disable and re-enable the mod to make sure the changes are applied properly.

@jamifa, thanks for the reply. I meant more bonus to ai per era. for example, 3% more food etc. per new era rather than just 2.
i have tried changing the "Extra" parameter in your code from 2 to 3. Will that work?

@lalitinthesun This mod does increase those values by era. If you mean without all the other stuff, you can just edit the mod files if you'd like. In DifficultyMod.sql under the comment line "-- set base bonus for food (removed), production, and gold to 15 per higher difficulty", set extra to 0 to remove the starting bonus, for example.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking, though. If you just don't want to increase the difficulty, I'm not sure why you'd want to avoid that. This mod already removes the stuff the AI normally gets by increasing the difficulty. So, combat against the AI isn't any more difficult than on normal, for example, and they don't get a huge headstart like they do in vanilla Civ 6.

hi @jamifa, thank you for the great mod. is there a way to increase food, production bonus with eras for ai. i just want ai to become a little more competitive without changing the difficulty setting

@jyrmar Thanks! To revert back to the standard AI combat bonus, all you need to do is edit "DifficultyMod.sql" in the mod's SQL folder. In the first block, just remove the whole line with "HIGH_DIFFICULTY_COMBAT_SCALING" in it. if you want to change it, you can just make a new code block that looks the same and change the Extra variable. To make it scale with the era like everything else, if you want that, just reference the "SCALING_CLASSICAL" stuff. You'll need to create variables for it, but it shouldn't be quite as complex as the yield bonuses.

@Destrado I played on Prince and above every game in vanilla - I don't see how vanilla Chieftain compares to any of the modded difficulty modes here. Here, it's Prince without the AI starting bonuses or combat handicaps, traded for other AI boosts. The bonuses have been decreased since the initial release since people were saying the AI tore ahead later on, so they might be too low now - the values can be changed pretty easily in the mod's code, though.

The point - as stated in the description - is to make peaceful play viable without becoming too easy, as it does in vanilla, after the hurdle at the beginning of the game. It's not perfect, but it doesn't come close to comparing to Chieftain..

This makes the game a total joke even at Deity difficulty. The player has such a huge advantage by the time the advantage for the AI is meaningful. It makes all opposing civs window-dressing, and no strategy you pursue will be contested in the slightest. What's the point? Just play on Chieftain.

@jamifa - terrific mod. Thank you! Any chance you can create a version that includes an AI combat power increase that scales for difficulty level? Or, what code should I change to implement this?

This has been one of my biggest gripes with the game, so happy to see a mod for it. thanks!

@Jamifa Aaahh, I see, interesting. Thank you so much for the clarification! :)

@Revolutionist "Value" is basically just a flat offset value, and "Extra" is what scales with the difficulty level. For some reason, for certain variables, the normal difficulty mode is considered to be one level higher than normal, one level higher is considered two levels higher, and so on. Specific bonuses (found by trial and error) need to be offset to compensate. If "Value" were set to 0, than the AI would receive one difficulty level bonus higher than they should. They'd get +2% food on Prince and 4% on the next level, even though it's supposed to be no bonus on Prince, then 2% on the next level. I don't know why it's like that with some values, but it was probably just an oversight in development.

Dear Jamifa! Thanks for your mod! :)
Sorry for the possibly noob question, but shouldn't ModifierArguments values (Value column) be positive? Why are they negative?

@n00bGingrich Unless you're planning to go for a large scale early game conquest, probably not. I don't generally mess with the higher difficulties at all, myself.

Is deity playable with this mod?

@Lesno From what I've seen of the patch notes, I don't think an update is necessary.

Great mod. I think this is the best of its kind. Will it be needing an update for the upcoming patch?

The mod is showing up now on a different map.

@rightonlogic Also, I forgot to mention specifically that this mod removes that combat bonus.

If it doesn't show up in your game, it's not active unless your game is just being weird. It shows up on mine, although I've had some mods not show up even though I know they're working. The AI gets combat strength bonus above Prince in vanilla, unmodded Civ 6.

I really like this idea of increasing difficulty by increasing the CPU's yields instead of how the default game increases ai difficulty. I did notice that it gave the cpu a combat bonus. is this part of the mod? this mod didnt show up on my active mods list when i was in the game, so i am not sure if i was even playing with this mod in the game.

@TheLoneWanderer In your Steam workshop folder (probably something like Program Files\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content), find 289070, then go through the folders one by one until you find JamsDifficultyModGS (it's probably 1656782378), go into the SQL folder and edit the DifficultyMod.sql file.

The third to last block is the scaling per era. The first value needs to be the inverse of the second value. For some reason, with these, it counts Prince as the first high difficulty level, so you use "Value" to offset the final amount. The second value scales with difficulty level, and they're all labeled.

The starting bonuses are closer to the top - to raise one, start by removing it from the code block where it's being set. Then add this for science and change the 0 to whatever you want (it scales with difficulty above Prince).

UPDATE ModifierArguments SET Extra=0 WHERE Name='Amount' AND ModifierId='HIGH_DIFFICULTY_SCIENCE_SCALING'