New BETA Version - 4.5.1 (February 28, 2024)

[looorg]

The new AI will build "war roads" as I understand it, in addition to city connections.

This bit sounds dodgy.

As an example then, why does it want me to build a road south of Philadelphia. There are already roads connecting and going thru the city. I guess it could be a secondary bridge to the east. But it's not really all that helpful since the beachhead on the other side is the same manufactory. It won't really make things faster. The city isn't really a front line city, Egypt is to the North but they are not important. The warzone is like two cities to the south. So all it would do is cost money. It's a road to nowhere or for nothing.

 

[Zuizgond]

Is the religious pressure in the city tooltip correct? I see pressure from most religions at 0.

In the attached image Nanjing does not seem to be pressured by confucianism.

 

[axatin]

Are the diplomat network point perma? Like in case spy points?
Do diplomat and spy network point stack?

Two question, regarding above:
When i switch the diplomat into spy, will the city keep some network points or do i start from scratch?
When i remove diplomat and put it somwhere else for a while, will i get full network points when i swich back to same capitol as diplomat?
And related, let say diplomat is removed due to war, network points will be kept, when i reinstate diplomat after the war end?

Whenever a spy or a diplomat leaves a city, all network points are lost. Switching between diplomat and spy can only be done by leaving the city, so network points can’t be kept when doing so.

 

[hokath]

As an example then, why does it want me to build a road south of Philadelphia.

I assume it values the bridge, but you'll have to ask @KungCheops

 

[azum4roll]

Is the religious pressure in the city tooltip correct? I see pressure from most religions at 0.

In the attached image Nanjing does not seem to be pressured by confucianism.

Something's probably been clearing the cached values. It'll be recalculated when it matters.

 

[KungCheops]

View attachment 685141
As an example then, why does it want me to build a road south of Philadelphia. There are already roads connecting and going thru the city. I guess it could be a secondary bridge to the east. But it's not really all that helpful since the beachhead on the other side is the same manufactory. It won't really make things faster. The city isn't really a front line city, Egypt is to the North but they are not important. The warzone is like two cities to the south. So all it would do is cost money. It's a road to nowhere or for nothing.

I can't really judge based on this image why it wants to change your road network, but I'm currently tweaking the AI road planning to reuse roads more so that there will be fewer roads in total.

Might be worth it to point out that the AI does not put much weight on existing roads when planning the roads networks. The full road network is re-planned each turn from scratch, so if the conditions change (new city founded, new resource discovered, etc.), the road network might change.

 

[KungCheops]

Hopefully I can figure out what's causing it to flip-flop on whether to build some roads, or figure out a way around the issue.

 

[ilteroi]

I can't really judge based on this image why it wants to change your road network, but I'm currently tweaking the AI road planning to reuse roads more so that there will be fewer roads in total.

Might be worth it to point out that the AI does not put much weight on existing roads when planning the roads networks. The full road network is re-planned each turn from scratch, so if the conditions change (new city founded, new resource discovered, etc.), the road network might change.

i feel like this is a suboptimal strategy. especially for human players who build some roads manually. if i put a road somewhere i want it to stay!

 

[elbo]

Misc. Balance
- Puppets and automated cities can now build Workers / Work Boats

Was it intentional to remove Venice' ability to purchase units in puppet/automated cities? Because it seems this change now limits Venice to only purchase units in the capitol.

I usually play on huge worlds as Venice, and I like having a small local empire, but purchase lots city states around the world as colonies/bases. This change makes this playstyle very difficult if I have to transport all units out from the capitol to my overseas territories.

 

[Anarcomu]

Was it intentional to remove Venice' ability to purchase units in puppet/automated cities? Because it seems this change now limits Venice to only purchase units in the capitol.

I usually play on huge worlds as Venice, and I like having a small local empire, but purchase lots city states around the world as colonies/bases. This change makes this playstyle very difficult if I have to transport all units out from the capitol to my overseas territories.

Do you refer to a past update ? All this balance do is allowing puppets/automated cities to add them to their queue, it does not (by itself) prevent Venice from purchasing units.

 

[KungCheops]

i feel like this is a suboptimal strategy. especially for human players who build some roads manually. if i put a road somewhere i want it to stay!

If you want your roads to stay, you can either not use automated workers, or you can enable the "don't replace improvements" option. But then you are likely to get a mess of roads.

 

[elbo]

Do you refer to a past update ? All this balance do is allowing puppets/automated cities to add them to their queue, it does not (by itself) prevent Venice from purchasing units.

Hm, then this looks like a bug. In my current game as Venice, with this version, puppet cities cannot purchase any units other than workers. I also cannot seem to add anything to the build queue. This applies to cities founded by Merchant of Venice and captured puppet cities alike.

 

[looorg]

I can't really judge based on this image why it wants to change your road network, but I'm currently tweaking the AI road planning to reuse roads more so that there will be fewer roads in total.

Might be worth it to point out that the AI does not put much weight on existing roads when planning the roads networks. The full road network is re-planned each turn from scratch, so if the conditions change (new city founded, new resource discovered, etc.), the road network might change.

It doesn't appear to be very consistent. I guess from the image that perhaps it things a road in a forest tile will help with movement, but if you don't check or see the greater picture it can be hard to judge. As noted I'm one of those people that never automate anything, not even super late in the game do I set them to auto-repair or whatever. I work my workers or I disband them. They are not to be trusted to build anything.

If you recalculate every turn it will naturally be hard to formulate plans as it usually takes many more turns to build the improvements and some improvements can be under construction so it might be hard to calculate in that regard.

Still is there a priority of things? Cause just from that image I would imagine that building farms on the flood plains would have been a higher automated task then building a road in a forest? Even tho I never build farms on flood plains until way late in the game. I prefer great person improvements on my flood plain tiles. But that could be a personal preference.

But what is the priority list since I assume there is one? Is roads at the top? Cause it sometimes even suggest building a road compared to say repairing a pillaged tile -- there was the volcano event and I would assume it would be suggesting that I repair the pillaged tiles but instead it wanted me to build some roads. It seems build a road is the default option where there is nothing better to do but sometimes it is the only thing to do ... I'm not sure.

Perhaps it's great if you just rely on full automation, but as a compliment to manual (proper) building it seems to be a bit hit and miss at the moment. But it doesn't really bother me in that regard since I just ignore it, but it's a bit confusing to see it's suggestions.

 

[ilteroi]

If you want your roads to stay, you can either not use automated workers, or you can enable the "don't replace improvements" option. But then you are likely to get a mess of roads.

huh? i think it's a reasonable requirement to be able to mix manual and automated workers without weird side effects. and this used to work fine.

 

[KungCheops]

huh? i think it's a reasonable requirement to be able to mix manual and automated workers without weird side effects. and this used to work fine.

AI road planning will take existing roads more into consideration (again) in the next version.

There's really no way to make the AI able to remove roads without having them remove roads that you build, unless a special flag is added for "human built roads". "Used to work fine" is an interesting way to say "automated workers were forbidden from removing roads before".

It doesn't appear to be very consistent. I guess from the image that perhaps it things a road in a forest tile will help with movement, but if you don't check or see the greater picture it can be hard to judge. As noted I'm one of those people that never automate anything, not even super late in the game do I set them to auto-repair or whatever. I work my workers or I disband them. They are not to be trusted to build anything.

If you recalculate every turn it will naturally be hard to formulate plans as it usually takes many more turns to build the improvements and some improvements can be under construction so it might be hard to calculate in that regard.

Still is there a priority of things? Cause just from that image I would imagine that building farms on the flood plains would have been a higher automated task then building a road in a forest? Even tho I never build farms on flood plains until way late in the game. I prefer great person improvements on my flood plain tiles. But that could be a personal preference.

But what is the priority list since I assume there is one? Is roads at the top? Cause it sometimes even suggest building a road compared to say repairing a pillaged tile -- there was the volcano event and I would assume it would be suggesting that I repair the pillaged tiles but instead it wanted me to build some roads. It seems build a road is the default option where there is nothing better to do but sometimes it is the only thing to do ... I'm not sure.

Perhaps it's great if you just rely on full automation, but as a compliment to manual (proper) building it seems to be a bit hit and miss at the moment. But it doesn't really bother me in that regard since I just ignore it, but it's a bit confusing to see it's suggestions.

There's no strict prioritization order, all builds are evaluated based on what yields the build will provide and how much those yields are needed in that particular city at this particular time.
Roads are evaluated based on how much of a movement bonus they will provide, how much happiness the road will give, and how much gold/production the road will give (and how much bonus yields it will give to any villages/towns along it).
Repair builds are not given any special priority, they are evaluated the same as any other improvement build (since they are very fast, they do automatically get higher priority).

City connecting roads may be overvalued at the moment because of how much happiness they provide. Haven't found a great way to evaluate a unit of happiness. Say a city connection is worth 3 happiness, is that better than a luxury resource?

 

[Zuizgond]

To be fair, this version is very good so far : AI expanding well, no crashes, lots of small little bugs corrected, text and tooltips updated, additional QoL stuff. A lot of changes from the VP congress are interesting and I also think the lux trading is at the right price now. I am still testing if the new AI periodic yield bonus is at the right level but overall this version is very pleasant to play.

Again, huge thanks to the all the people who dedicated time to make this happen!

 

[statusquo]

Im play on communitas and im using mod "Maps - Rotate Start Position (v 13)" so that i dont need to restart/regenerate map to find some interesting starting location,
and i just spoted second time, that gold as a monopoly luxury is generated for 2 players. Funny thing, one time, it generated gold to the guy that was next to me. (total like 20+ gold)
Is this suppose to happen?

 

[Strigoi19]

Hi, new to Vox populi, and just got the 4.5 on and started a game. Idk if this is the right thread but am I supposed to start with only a settler? Ive tried it with only 4.5 so I assume Ive downloaded it wrong. Does anyone know where I should start?

 

[Zuizgond]

I noticed border growth is now limited to fourth ring. Is it intended?

 

[solohard1011]

AI road planning will take existing roads more into consideration (again) in the next version.

There's really no way to make the AI able to remove roads without having them remove roads that you build, unless a special flag is added for "human built roads". "Used to work fine" is an interesting way to say "automated workers were forbidden from removing roads before".

Could you point out in which files would this code be please? I want to forbid them to remove the roads again, because right now automated workers mess it up. I see automated workers prioritizing road removal far away while there are tiles that could have productive improvements right next to them (and I don't want to have it removed in the first place, it was built for a purpose).

UPD: nevermind, I'll just revert the builder AI related commits for now. These changes seem to be quite a work in progress.