I’m going to make a mildly stronger claim. I think this game really is quite moddable by a non-coder. What you need is to implement a different ruleset with new win conditions; everything else can be done with copying existing files into the correct file structure. New win conditions are specified by a pretty boring JSON file, docs here:

https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv/blob/master/docs/Modders/Mod-file-structure/5-Miscellaneous-JSON-files.md#victorytypesjson

See here for an MVP for a mod of this type (probably replaces/strips away too much, but you should be able to find the vanilla files in the github linked in the OP):

https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv-minimal-base-ruleset/tree/master

Which is all to say, this is much easier than doing address lookup imo.

By testing it out in the app?

I’ve also tried getting AI to program really simple things, like using js to find particular elements in a webpage (which I don’t control and involves far too many lines). It did fine.

It’s not ready for commercial use, but it makes hacking around unfamiliar code more accessible.

Kozy asked for a different rule set; essentially changing a few numbers related to non-combat victory (shorter research times, lower policy points required, etc). Identifying these numbers in a complicated code base, especially for a non-programmer, could be very difficult. For the non-programmer, understanding how the code works isn’t very important. You just need to know what to change, and perhaps make sure you don’t change more.

I think this is exactly a case where getting a novice programming friend to make a mod would make sense. Equivalently, to vibe code.

That sounds like something easily modded; like a couple of integers somewhere. It would be cool to do (and seems vibe-code accessible if a model can hold the full script in context?)

Thank you!