Current v1.13 Development Discussion

[BenZL43]

Yes, I mean when the tile is already covered with their culture (maybe from another closely settled city), I think the purple circle should no longer point to that tile - or maybe - skipped that tile and look for tile that are uncovered by the culture yet.

 

[Chep]

Congresses feel really weird

since my previous games never had any (probably due to the worldwars raging on and on), I had my first congress in a game with the Ottomans.

Things I think should be amended:

1. You don't get contact to all participating civs.

I mean seriously, we come together decide how to split up the world but afterwards it is as if I had never even heard of that civ? (Japan in my case)

2. You don't get any infos about your option.

I chose a city which I didn't get (dont know why or if it was close) but one of mine got demanded and I had some options that just didn't make sense.
For example: I could "infiltrate" the German Delegation for 1k spy points and for 2k spy points. Both times exactly the same text, no info on success chance or what this actually accomplishes.
Similar with bribing, I had no info what it can achieve.
Despite chosing to get involved both times, both times I failed and got them angry, so I guess the success chance is somewhere around 50% or less?

Why aren't the success chances displayed? And I assume there are more options if you have even more spy points/gold that just weren't visible for me, it would be good to have those displayed (greyed out) as well, to just give the player an idea that there are X costlier options and thus his "cheap" option will probably fail.

Also do these options only pop up if they are about to vote against me?

edit: holy crap, I get a -4 diplo modifier for failing that? Oo
Does it decay quickly?

 

[Leoreth]

Actually I made some mistakes in strategy of this game, now I play in 1912AD and I have make 5 wars end. But because of those wrong strategies I think I can't stop wars by UN from now, and my technologies also very slow. I will play as Canada another time if possible.

Okay, good to know, I think if 5 peace deals are possible by 1912 then 12 might even be a reasonable number, but 10 definitely works.

Yes I received immigrants. But only 2 or 3 times from 1866 to 1912(40 turns in Epic), turn to Canadian culture immediately, but I think I don't find GPP increased by immigrants.

I think I will make the mechanic prioritize NA more, part of the problem seems to be that there are now a lot more potential target civs.

Why aren't the success chances displayed? And I assume there are more options if you have even more spy points/gold that just weren't visible for me, it would be good to have those displayed (greyed out) as well, to just give the player an idea that there are X costlier options and thus his "cheap" option will probably fail.

Displaying the chances is possible. Not sure if I can also add inactive buttons, the Python interface is kind of rigid in these things.

Also do these options only pop up if they are about to vote against me?

Not necessarily about to vote against you. It always depends when their decision is up to the random number generator. I think the flavor text reflects that ("Germany is undecided ...").

To be more precise, there are two factors that influence an AI decision: how much they think you deserve the city ("claim validity"), influenced by stuff like stability maps, your culture, proximity to your cities ..., and how favorable they are towards you compared to the owner ("favor claimant" and "favor owner"), influenced by diplomacy and other factors such as their own desire to expand there.

This results in five possible scenarios:
1) positive claim validity and favor claimant + claim validity < favor owner: they think you have a valid claim, but favor the owner so much over you that even the claim can't overcome it (vote no)
2) positive claim validity and favor claimant > favor owner: they think you have a valid claim and favor you over the owner (vote yes)
3) positive claim validity and favor claimant < favor owner: they think you have a valid claim and favor the owner, but your claim is good to overcome their favor of the owner (the previous two cases have already been ruled out). So their behavior is random (better claim means better chances though) and you can increase the probability by spending gold or espionage (votes random / based on bribe success)
4) negative claim validity and favor claimant + claim validity > favor owner: they favor you enough to overlook your bad claim (vote yes)
5) negative claim otherwise: you have a bad claim and are not favored enough (vote no)

edit: holy crap, I get a -4 diplo modifier for failing that? Oo
Does it decay quickly?

Like normal temporary modifiers (such as from events). You're right that -4 is probably too harsh.

 

[Chep]

displaying the chances and possibly even the risks would really help make the congresses more accessible.
They are currently one of the prime examples why this mod is unnecessarily difficult to learn for new players.

I already assumed that the AI decides based on the factors you described, but ingame I had options with no explanation and no idea what they will do, so adding some more info there will just make it clearer what you aim for with these congresses.
And yes, getting a HUGE diplomatic modifier that basically stays for the rest of the game just because you invested several turns worth of beakers without getting any positive result seems unfair and makes me think why anyone would ever think of using these options.


Some other things:
1. Why aren't the Incan goals "BY"-goals instead of "IN"-goals? they are pretty clutch anyway, but it just feels weird and making them "by" would soften some of the random factors (barbs spawning basically in your culture, destroying roads for UHV1, the conquerers coming early and taking a town/destryoing a road for UHV1) and you can't think of approaching UHV3 before dealing with the Euros anyway. It is just boring to just hit "end turn" several times after finishing your game.

2. Why aren't the Ottoman goals "BY"-goals? UHV1 (4 Wonders) would work the same as now (you never obsolete one of your wonders in that timeframe anyway) and UHV3 forces you to conquer a huge portion of Europe anyway and there are no new civs appearing (yeah Prussia, but I don't think it is possible to end before 1700AD)
In my last game I had 15 turns of hitting "end turn" and hoping that I don't lose due to a congress in one of the last turns of my game.

3. Who are the European civs mentioned in the 3rd UHV for the Ottomans? Do the Moors count? Does Russia? Do the Vikings? Sure you get an amount displayed but in order to beat them all, it can be very beneficial to destroy a certain civ. Would gifting say, French cities to China help or would the culture from those cities still count against me?

And just as a side note:
I think the Incans will need some help, with those new culture changes you make it almost impossible to cover South America with your culture quickly enough.

edit:

I think you should revisit the vasallization concept. Right now it is just pretty useless, since the AI won't ever capitulate before they are at unstable/collapsing anyway at which point it is detrimental to the players stability to actually accept their surrender (and liberating them some of their cities doesnt seem to help either)

as a final afterthought, (though I think I already know your answer), how about adding a tiny bonus to expansion stability if you are the only civ there? I am thinking of something along the lines of a +5 to the (core pop * era) bonus (making it (core pop * era)+5 to count against your overexpansion. This is negligible for any bigger civ but will help with that initial situation. Quite often you have to conquer a few cities during your first turns, while your core cities are still at size 1 or 2. Examples would be the Incas, the Ottomans (if you dont get Constantinople immediately, they will whip it down), the Greeks (having size 1 at home and a size 3 city in Greece already is really, really dangerous) and possibly quite a few others.

 

[Leoreth]

New commit:
- fixed a bug that lead to culture being applied to the wrong plots (likely the cause of weird borders)
- changed the tile control rules so that different landmasses aren't covered last anymore
- changed the information on next covered plot (purple circle, progress bars) so that it refers to the next plot that will actually be covered, excluding already covered plots or those out of cultural range
- made the AI somewhat more willing to trade cities to Canada
- prevented the American AI from settling cities in Canada until a few turns after the Canadian spawn
- cities in North America now have a higher chance to be targeted by immigration
- stability modifiers (including raze penalties) are now properly reset when switching civilizations

 

[billyleeback16]

btw, I think that purple circle should no longer appear if the next tile is already covered by the civ's culture. It seems pointless.

It does? Is the entire second ring covered?

An example (picture and save) would help.

Edit: oh, you mean because the tile is already covered due to another city?

I'd like to echo this concern with the new culture mechanic. In this example with a new Viking game Copenhagen's next culture expansion is into a tile already covered by Oslo. That seems silly to me. Culture should expand to tiles that are not already covered by your own culture from other cities.

Also another specifically Viking issue with these new culture rules is Iceland. Under the BtS culture rules you had to pop Reykjavik's borders once to cover the ocean tile so you can get a galley to Vinland in time. The new system can be a bit of a problem for that UHV if ocean tiles are the least prioritized tiles when cultural borders expand.

Edit: Ninja'd

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I am aware that the number is probably too high. Have you finished the game though? I'd prefer to change it based on actual experiences.

Can somebody please name a single serious war Canada actually managed to end? At least Carter has Camp David under his belt. The only Canadian Peace Noble prize was awarded to Lester Bowles Pearson for his role to end Suez crisis.

 

[Fallen_Kings]

I think Leoreth should start a 1700 game and see how much work he should still put into the new culture mechanic...

 

[billyleeback16]

Can somebody please name a single serious war Canada actually managed to end? At least Carter has Camp David under his belt. The only Canadian Peace Noble prize was awarded to Lester Bowles Pearson for his role to end Suez crisis.

Well there is the Suez Crisis as you mentioned. They also managed to diffuse open hostility between Israel and Syria in the 1970s after the former took the Golan Heights in the Six Day War (no open war between the two since 1973, same as Egypt btw). They've also been involved in Cyprus (still disputed but mostly peaceful), and a successful effort in the Balkans when Yugoslavia broke up in the 1990s.

Of course their efforts haven't been all successful. The Canadian-lead peacekeeping force in Rwanda failed to prevent the genocide that happened there in 1994. The same can be said of their efforts in modern day Congo and Somalia. I suppose I should also mention that almost all of these efforts are done with other countries within the framework of UN resolutions.

The point is it's been a big part of Canada's approach to foreign policy since the end of World War II and having that as a UHV goal is both unique and challenging for the game. That being said, I think that if you become Secretary General as Canada and propose a "Make peace with XXX" resolution that passes, that should be counted towards the UHV goal.

 

[Leoreth]

I think Leoreth should start a 1700 game and see how much work he should still put into the new culture mechanic...

Have rolled a couple of Canada starts that were looking good. Sometimes cultural control was a bit off because of the bug I mentioned, but that should be fixed by now.

The initial situation is problematic because I had to keep initial city culture low precisely because the old culture mechanic was unsuitable for RFC. Now that it's changed I can increase it to produce nice looking borders again, I just haven't done that yet.

That being said, I think that if you become Secretary General as Canada and propose a "Make peace with XXX" resolution that passes, that should be counted towards the UHV goal.

It does! Or rather it should, if this is an actual observation that it doesn't.

 

[ezzlar]

Ah, all the good stuff! I can no longer stay put playing the latest release. It´s SVN download time!

 

[Fallen_Kings]

Have rolled a couple of Canada starts that were looking good. Sometimes cultural control was a bit off because of the bug I mentioned, but that should be fixed by now.

The initial situation is problematic because I had to keep initial city culture low precisely because the old culture mechanic was unsuitable for RFC. Now that it's changed I can increase it to produce nice looking borders again, I just haven't done that yet.


It does! Or rather it should, if this is an actual observation that it doesn't.

Not only the strange borders but also too many CTDs.I played 3 games(1 canada,1 china,1 france),all crashed.

 

[Leoreth]

Not only the strange borders but also too many CTDs.I played 3 games(1 canada,1 china,1 france),all crashed.

Likely unrelated to the culture thing.

Did they crash during autoplay?

 

[Fallen_Kings]

Likely unrelated to the culture thing.

Did they crash during autoplay?

Both in autoplay(as Canada) and normal turns(China and France).Playing as China I made some test:I loaded to the last turn but the game crashed in loading.I got back to 2 turns ago,changed the random seed,but the game still crashed.Then I used WB to expand some borders and the CTD disappeared,but several turns later the game crashed again.So I guess it's related to culture,and the game seems unplayable until the bug is fixed.

 

[Fallen_Kings]

Also,I don't like this new mechanic at all.Cities keep expanding into useless plots and plots I already owned.Except for these annoying things I see nothing really changed.Culture is still useless except for the first basic ones.The reason why culture in Civ5 is important is that it is needed to adopt policy,not that it is needed to acquire plots.If you want to make culture really important,I would suggest giving it more uses,like reducing unstability or influencing civics,or simply removing the core area protection.

 

[Leoreth]

Both in autoplay(as Canada) and normal turns(China and France).Playing as China I made some test:I loaded to the last turn but the game crashed in loading.I got back to 2 turns ago,changed the random seed,but the game still crashed.Then I used WB to expand some borders and the CTD disappeared,but several turns later the game crashed again.So I guess it's related to culture,and the game seems unplayable until the bug is fixed.

Then it'd be great if you could show me a save and tell me what you did that caused the crash (or whether the crash happened during AI turns).

Also,I don't like this new mechanic at all.Cities keep expanding into useless plots and plots I already owned.Except for these annoying things I see nothing really changed.Culture is still useless except for the first basic ones.The reason why culture in Civ5 is important is that it is needed to adopt policy,not that it is needed to acquire plots.If you want to make culture really important,I would suggest giving it more uses,like reducing unstability or influencing civics,or simply removing the core area protection.

I would never do something to make this mod more like Civ5. The purpose of this change was not to make culture more useful (although it pushes the point where it is completely useless further back), but to change the culture expansion mechanic to something more suitable for the setting and map size.

I still have plans to make culture more useful, this change isn't really part of that besides getting some problems of the previous rules out of the way.

 

[FinalLegendZero]

- prevented the American AI from settling cities in Canada until a few turns after the Canadian spawn

This didn't work. I just started a 1700AD Canada game, and America already settled a city in western Canada.

 

[Leoreth]

Which city (screenshot preferred)?

 

[FinalLegendZero]

Which city (screenshot preferred)?

The tile marked by the caption on the provided screenshot (1N of the highlighted tile) is where the city was. Also, I can confirm that this happened before the Canadian spawn, as I used WB to check (that particular game was started specifically to check if the American AI adjustment worked).

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, will look again.