New (Very Small) Beta - February 24th (2/24)

Hey all,

Small changes inbound, just for CP. Savegame compatible.

• Fixed City capture popup issue for users of the CP - please note: if using EUI, it's a good idea to delete the LUA folder of the CP anyways (specifically the ProductionPopup.lua and DiploList.lua files)
• Adjusted military power value upwards for bullying
• Adjusted bullying value to scale more clearly into late game
• Removed era scaling from great admiral/general points on CS quests
• Added minimum military power (must be in top 60% of major civs) to do a PtP with a CS
• Adjusted civilian killing penalty, and increased threshold before it becomes 'global' quite a bit - also only affects civs that already dislike the civilian killer (so no sabotage of opinion)
• Adjusted the value of trade deals towards opinion upwards (gifts/favorable deals should make the AI happier)
• Fixed rivertile lua issue for JFD

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CP only, but I did update autoinstaller for those that want it.

Beta Folder

Online as of 8:30pm EST. I'll be MIA for a few days for work, but I'll try to poke my head in from time to time.

Cheers,
G

Adjusted the value of trade deals towards opinion upwards (gifts/favorable deals should make the AI happier)

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Just out of curiosity, how does this works in vanilla? Is there a clear cut formula? Does this bonus even exists in the unmodded game?

bane_ said:

Just out of curiosity, how does this works in vanilla? Is there a clear cut formula? Does this bonus even exists in the unmodded game?

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Yeah it does. It was there, but only barely. May need more buffs too. We will see.

In this post I'm going to share a brief argument I had with myself.

I was thinking about the 'give gifts to get diplomatic bonus' thing we're trying to make functional. It occurred to me that there was nothing stopping me from gifting gold per turn, then selling the AI excess resources to get back that GPT. I thought that sunk the idea until I thought it through, and realized there were multiple reasons it wasn't a problem.

First, the AI's valuation of trade items are somewhat arcane, but can usually be expressed in gold per turn. If I give them 50 gold per turn, then sell them resources to get back that 50 gold per turn, I'll basically be getting the same value as if I had given them the resources in the first place. Possibly less, as they may value receiving gold per turn lower than giving it away. So, mechanically, it's probably a non-issue.

Thematically, it actually pretty well mirrors a lot of foreign aid situations. I know, for example, the USA has a lot of agreements where they send $X million USD on the promise that the recipient spend the bulk of it importing American goods and services. I don't believe the USA is unique in this sort of agreement. It's a common method of building international relations.

So, if you're not going to profit from it, why bother? Well, you might want that diplo bonus now, to get a friend in time for some event or war, but not have the resource production in place, or your resources could be tied up in other agreements. You give them a pile of money now, and as your acquire new resources or free up old ones, sell to them to get your money back.

Those are my 2am musings on the subject. I'm excited by the idea of being able to buy artificial international good will. I'm hoping it will lead to more interesting alliance vs alliance wars, and proxy battles.

please note: if using EUI, it's a good idea to delete the LUA folder of the CP anyways (specifically the ProductionPopup.lua and DiploList.lua files)

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So, delete the whole LUA folder instead of just CityBanner and YieldIconManager?

Also, do I need to clear my cache? I have several boxes checked (such as the new "Allow barb kills to contribute to GG/GA points" option) and they become unchecked when I clear my cache. Since it's save game compatible, I can continue my current game, but I'll have to remember to reload all the applicable mods I was using. But those aforementioned check boxed are on the "Advanced Setup" screen which I won't be accessing because it comes after the "Setup Game/Load Game" choice (specifically when you choose "Setup Game," while I will be choosing to "Load Game"). So will my game be screwed up because of those check boxes? [I hope this all made sense outside my head]

Those settings are saved in the save file.

Added minimum military power (must be in top 60% of major civs) to do a PtP with a CS

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I assume this is a temporary solution to the "no-brainer PtP" problem? Sure, you won't be able to Pledge to Protect every CS the moment you meet them, but the moment you enter the top 60% of military powers, nothing prevents you from PtP'ing all of them at once. So we're back to our previous problem.

One solution I can think of is to make a pledge possible only when you can demand light tribute from the CS. This way, the first player to PtP a particular CS will make it harder for other players to PtP that CS, since it's harder to demand tribute from an already-protected CS. But I'm not sure if the AI can be taught to send its troops near a CS just to pledge protection.

If not, another alternative would be to put a limit to the number of Pledges you can make based on your military power. The maximum percentage of the number of City-States you can pledge to protect is at most equal to the percentage of your military score relative to the world's military score (dunno how this is calculated). For example, your military represents 20% of the world's total military might. You can only protect at most 20% of the City-States in the game, rounded down. So if there are 16 CS's, you can only protect 3.2 or 3. Maybe make 2 be the baseline so that you can protect 2 + 3 = 5, and you can protect 2 no matter how weak you are. And if you lose a war, all your current pledges are revoked. This is so that you can't continue protecting beyond your limit after you lost some of your strength.

If anyone has better/simpler suggestions, please go ahead.

supracseduch said:

I assume this is a temporary solution to the "no-brainer PtP" problem? Sure, you won't be able to Pledge to Protect every CS the moment you meet them, but the moment you enter the top 60% of military powers, nothing prevents you from PtP'ing all of them at once. So we're back to our previous problem.

One solution I can think of is to make a pledge possible only when you can demand light tribute from the CS. This way, the first player to PtP a particular CS will make it harder for other players to PtP that CS, since it's harder to demand tribute from an already-protected CS. But I'm not sure if the AI can be taught to send its troops near a CS just to pledge protection.

If not, another alternative would be to put a limit to the number of Pledges you can make based on your military power. The maximum percentage of the number of City-States you can pledge to protect is at most equal to the percentage of your military score relative to the world's military score (dunno how this is calculated). For example, your military represents 20% of the world's total military might. You can only protect at most 20% of the City-States in the game, rounded down. So if there are 16 CS's, you can only protect 3.2 or 3. Maybe make 2 be the baseline so that you can protect 2 + 3 = 5, and you can protect 2 no matter how weak you are. And if you lose a war, all your current pledges are revoked. This is so that you can't continue protecting beyond your limit after you lost some of your strength.

If anyone has better/simpler suggestions, please go ahead.

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It is part one of two. I'm goin to have the PtP revoked by the CS if you drop below 50%. Also a warning at 60% so you have a chance to respond.

G

I'm still not seeing the gift modifier comes in. I'm hoping it's just invisible to Transparent Diplomacy. I gave Kamehameha 6 luxuries for 50 turns with no modifier appearing, and he was willing to buy a lux for 10gpt at the time.

PurpleMentat said:

I'm still not seeing the gift modifier comes in. I'm hoping it's just invisible to Transparent Diplomacy. I gave Kamehameha 6 luxuries for 50 turns with no modifier appearing, and he was willing to buy a lux for 10gpt at the time.

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Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. Was transparent diplomacy something I made for C4DF? Or was it rebuilt / remade / whatever for the CP independent on what I believe I did some odd years ago?

Either way, if designed correctly, showing diplomatic modifiers should be done for any modifiers showing up in the list. Additions to the list should have to be added to the DLL but the transparent diplomacy should automatically pick up the value in the construction of the display string. So transparent diplomacy should pickup everything. assuming it uses the same stuff I did.

Gazebo said:

It is part one of two. I'm goin to have the PtP revoked by the CS if you drop below 50%. Also a warning at 60% so you have a chance to respond.

G

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I don't understand. If you drop below 50%, your pledge is automatically revoked? Let's say there are 10 players and you're ranked 6th in terms of military might. Then you're already within the top 60% but below the top 50%. That would mean that your pledge didn't even take effect. And the warning at 60%, I simply don't understand.

Edit: Unless you meant "PtP is revoked if you drop below the top 60%", and "a warning at 50%". That makes more sense, but still doesn't solve the problem. It's pretty much PtP all CS's if you're in the top 60%, no PtP if not. While it encourages building more units, it's still very problematic.

supracseduch said:

I don't understand. If you drop below 50%, your pledge is automatically revoked? Let's say there are 10 players and you're ranked 6th in terms of military might. Then you're already within the top 60% but below the top 50%. That would mean that your pledge didn't even take effect. And the warning at 60%, I simply don't understand.

Edit: Unless you meant "PtP is revoked if you drop below the top 60%", and "a warning at 50%". That makes more sense, but still doesn't solve the problem. It's pretty much PtP all CS's if you're in the top 60%, no PtP if not. While it encourages building more units, it's still very problematic.

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Also, is this based on the original number of civs, or is it dynamic when a civ is destroyed or resurrected?

Didn't barbarians have the ability to heal themselves until recently? They definitely weren't healing in the 2/24 beta but I could swear they had that ability.

I didn't see it mentioned in any of the recent changelogs.

I feel you should be able to PTP your nearby City States even if you have some Military power. So consider both distance and power for PTP.

I doesent seem to be able to end vassalage in the latest 2 betas what i can se?

supracseduch said:

I don't understand. If you drop below 50%, your pledge is automatically revoked? Let's say there are 10 players and you're ranked 6th in terms of military might. Then you're already within the top 60% but below the top 50%. That would mean that your pledge didn't even take effect. And the warning at 60%, I simply don't understand.

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wild speculation (as i can't see the code for this patch in the git):
It may use your "power score", and you need to have at least 60% of the best score.
Power score is much more continuous than rank.

I thought the downside to doing Pledge to Protect on city-states was that other civs would call you up and give you the choice between risking war with them or revoking your pledge (which makes the city-state hate you).

Did that get changed?

Declaration of War screens are still gone, Maria I has declared on me twice, Askia has declared on me once, Rome also went to war with me in this one game but I still haven't seen a single war declaration screen outside of the small indication on the right, screen didn't appear.

It may not be a big mechanical problem but they were always cool to see and added a lot of flavour to this game, I really miss them and hope they are added back soon.

I like this new war declaration likelihood by AI btw, they are much smarter about it. Too bad I placed my cities in a way so smart they just can't be conquered without overwhelming strength.

AI should pillage more. I don't think I'm being punished enough for my lack of military. It would make AI sieges much more effective and annoying.

Also, I'm not seeing any DoW screens.

Joo

supracseduch said:

AI should pillage more. I don't think I'm being punished enough for my lack of military. It would make AI sieges much more effective and annoying.

Also, I'm not seeing any DoW screens.

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Yes, more AI pillages please. AI doesn't seem to understand that they'll get HP when destroying land.