[GS] Antarctic Late Summer Patch Discussion Thread

[Wingednosering]

Not sure how tech trading is unrealistic. Many inventions popped up in one area and then spread across the world via trade.

What I really miss from Civ IV was trading map info. Again, quite realistic. Not sure why that was ever removed.

Personally civ V and VI are far, far ahead of civ IV for enjoyability and design in my opinion, but I'll say no more since there's no reason for this thread to get into that.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

While it may not be very accurate historically, it is an interesting gameplay element, which requires observation and skill to use it effectively, I see nothing lame about it. And if you don't quite like it, there are options in the settings to tone it down by picking 'No Tech brokering" - you can only trade the techs you've researched yourself, or turn it off completely and play w/o tech trading. You have all the freedom to customise you game.


There are leaders in civ IV who do not care about religion much, and there are religious nuts, it is not so trivial as you describe. You have an option not to convert, if it is too dangerous, but then you sacrifice production bonus.

Religion is IV is a factor for the first blocks of friends, it makes you pick and choose your first camp, perhaps sacrificing something. And then, when time advances, people switch out of religions and its importance for diplo fades away, but is replaced with importance for culture. That's one of the most beautiful game systems with all the depth.

In comparison V's religious system is completely bland, just a shopping cart for more perks, in VI - well, you get to play with emperor Palpatine's powers, that's already a big plus over V, but not enough to top IV.

Wait, 5's religion is bland compared to . . . IV?

Really?

 

[WillowBrook]

I'm wondering if anybody can confirm that this does not work as intended. In my current game I was dragged into a war because my ally was attacked. I conquered several of the aggressor's cities but it did not generate any grievances.

I was wondering about that, but my example is too complicated to draw any conclusions. Alexander captured a city state, and I joined the emergency against him. I liberated the city state, and then went on to liberate five other cities he'd captured earlier (two city states and all three of Pericles' cities). Then I captured his capital, leaving him with four cities, and made peace. I didn't see negative modifiers with other civs for the capture, but I didn't look carefully, and it's possible that all the liberating I'd done countered any negative.

 

[SaiH]

I was wondering about that, but my example is too complicated to draw any conclusions. Alexander captured a city state, and I joined the emergency against him. I liberated the city state, and then went on to liberate five other cities he'd captured earlier (two city states and all three of Pericles' cities). Then I captured his capital, leaving him with four cities, and made peace. I didn't see negative modifiers with other civs for the capture, but I didn't look carefully, and it's possible that all the liberating I'd done countered any negative.

There is a grievance protocol with every civ and any generated +/- grievances should be logged there. In my case there weren't any. Also the tooltip when capturing a city always said that keeping the city will cause 0 grievances.

 

[Aristos]

There is a grievance protocol with every civ and any generated +/- grievances should be logged there. In my case there weren't any. Also the tooltip when capturing a city always said that keeping the city will cause 0 grievances.

Share the savegame and we can try.

 

[Furycrab]

I don't think I've ever seen a tech trading system with AI in a 4x that wasn't ripe for abuse when properly explored. It's mostly just that it doesn't answer the simple question of how would you stop 2 players in the game from cutting the tech tree in half by researching different parts of it.

This includes popular modded versions of various 4x games. Some of them have community driven balance patches which often basically disable it as far as the AI is concerned.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I don't think I've ever seen a tech trading system with AI in a 4x that wasn't ripe for abuse when properly explored. It's mostly just that it doesn't answer the simple question of how would you stop 2 players in the game from cutting the tech tree in half by researching different parts of it.

This includes popular modded versions of various 4x games. Some of them have community driven balance patches which often basically disable it as far as the AI is concerned.

The best solution is to
1. assume they will, make getting through the later tech tree require a global level effort (you acquire the resources of the world either peacefully or by conquering them)
AND
2, make Any type of trading have some type of a cost/investment (so it does only happen later)

 

[Kwami]

The best solution is to
1. assume they will, make getting through the later tech tree require a global level effort (you acquire the resources of the world either peacefully or by conquering them)
AND
2, make Any type of trading have some type of a cost/investment (so it does only happen later)

Civ VI does this a bit with the alliance system. The scientific alliance gives you discounts on techs that your ally has already researched or is researching. It's limited knowledge sharing with opportunity costs, which I like.

 

[Furycrab]

1. assume they will, make getting through the later tech tree require a global level effort (you acquire the resources of the world either peacefully or by conquering them)
AND
2, make Any type of trading have some type of a cost/investment (so it does only happen later)

Then you need to start balancing around Map size because all the sudden a Huge map game with 20 Civs could theoretically go almost exponentially faster than a 4-8 Civ game. The only way you could ground this is if it costs some other sort of Yield to even initiate the tech trades. However at that point, is that really that different from "If you want more Science, just produce more Science yield"? I don't get the appeal of doing a round table of all the AI available, looking for someone friendly enough to give you some free techs.

I sometimes feel like you also have to make the AI dumb just for the sake of them being willing to make these tech trades. Which is why community balance patches often almost straight up disable the feature by putting insane weights to where the AI basically won't trade. For the record, I think the diplo screen in general leads to this type of dumb stuff, and personally would love to see Civ games move towards something like the Black Market systems Endless games have when it comes to trading resources.

It's also problematic to say the least when it comes to Multiplayer. I could easily see rules for MP leagues that would ban tech trading.

Like I said, I've never seen a 4X that pulled it off right in a way that wasn't either abused, or basically disabled by mods/patches. Does it mean it can't? No. Just not sure it's worth the trouble trying to figure it out.

 

[tedhebert]

Hey fanatics, care to fill me in ? left for Helsinki on april 5th, just came back today ... do I understand correctly that a patch came in to fix problems in the antartica summer patch, created more problems, and a later hotfix came in because of trading issues ?

Anything else I should know ? hard for me to make sense of all the activity in the different threads..

Thxs

 

[Kwami]

The Antarctic Summer Patch caused a trade bug. A hot fix basically fixed the bug. That's all. The game is very playable at this point.

 

[King Rad]

If they have a military emergency against you they will not make peace no matter what. As soon as the emergency expires, they will be quick to settle. This goes for all the civs in an emergency.

I had a military emergency against me [for a city state I had taken when it was allied with the civ I was at war with - one that had already taken one of my allied city states]. Tamar voted in favor and was the only one who participated in the emergency,. 15 turns later, other than my killing a couple of her troops back on her continent and a boat or two, nothing else had happened. I offered peace, she accepted, and now we're friendly [although she won't accept a declaration of friendship - none of the other civs will right now, although several were allies earlier and all but two are still friendly], although the emergency still hasn't been settled [about 4-5 more turns to go].

 

[SaiH]

Share the savegame and we can try.

Playing as Norway, alliance with Hungary. Kongo declared war on Hungary.
As I said, I then conquered several cities from Kongo which did not generate any grievances.

 

[Josephias]

I was wondering about that, but my example is too complicated to draw any conclusions. Alexander captured a city state, and I joined the emergency against him. I liberated the city state, and then went on to liberate five other cities he'd captured earlier (two city states and all three of Pericles' cities). Then I captured his capital, leaving him with four cities, and made peace. I didn't see negative modifiers with other civs for the capture, but I didn't look carefully, and it's possible that all the liberating I'd done countered any negative.

I just saw this behavior in my current game. As Alexander I was planning a conquest of Korea when Seondeok triggered a city-state emergency. Nubia liberated the CS immediately, but I kept conquering all the planned slice of Korean territory (including the Capitol) I had planned.
When I checked my grievances balance with Seondeok, it was at 0. None of the conquering done as a result of the emergency war was taken into account.
I guess there is still some bug in the tying of conquering grievances to the type of war. As joining an emergency caises no grievances, conquering in the war started by that emergency, also does not.

 

[Bradypus]

Not sure how tech trading is unrealistic. Many inventions popped up in one area and then spread across the world via trade.

What I really miss from Civ IV was trading map info. Again, quite realistic. Not sure why that was ever removed.

Personally civ V and VI are far, far ahead of civ IV for enjoyability and design in my opinion, but I'll say no more since there's no reason for this thread to get into that.

Yeah, be careful with preferring V and VI to IV around these parts. You'll get slammed for it.

Trading maps I would enjoy. But trading techs, I am not so sure. It seems to me it can be easily exploited. Particularly in multiplayer. It would allow a group of lesser players to just skip ahead of a skilled player by trading techs between them and planning who researches what. This could be combined with teaming up for a pillage/repair scheme (still science for Norway).

 

[Wingednosering]

Yeah, be careful with preferring V and VI to IV around these parts. You'll get slammed for it.

Trading maps I would enjoy. But trading techs, I am not so sure. It seems to me it can be easily exploited. Particularly in multiplayer. It would allow a group of lesser players to just skip ahead of a skilled player by trading techs between them and planning who researches what. This could be combined with teaming up for a pillage/repair scheme (still science for Norway).

There are ways to get around it. An example off the top of my head would be X science per turn towards the tech you want for X gold per turn at a fixed rate, rather than a negotiable one. The other player benefits and you can't just trade back and forth for free.

[Edit]: That's actually pretty similar to the current science alliance.

 

[Ondolindë]

Over on Stream, AspyrBlair responded that the hot fix is coming tomorrow morning for Mac and, I am guessing, Linux as well.

 

[Slip de Garcon]

Can I just ask something ELSE about trade?

Is it as a result of this patch that sometimes the AI will flatly refuse to trade gold or gold-per-turn for luxuries?

Example: I will offer AI player furs in exchange for cocoa. He immediately agrees.

Now before I could then try and get him to trade 10 GPT as well, he'd refuse, and clicking the "make more agreeable" (can't remember the wording) button would end up offering me 21 Gold and 3 GPT.

Now - only on occasion - he will say "I'm not prepared to trade that" and the only option is to exit the trade screen.

That's new isn't it?

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Won a space victory during a dark age - no achievement.

It is my view that there are too few strategic resources - or that each resource doesn't have sufficient copies. In my latest game it was hard to field a decent force despite controlling a good third of the planet. It is particularly noticeable that oil doesn't really seem to appear in deserts. Basic units such as infantry should not need oil. Mechanized infantry, sure, but basic soldiers - limits what can be built. It doesn't make sense even as a game that you can build anti-tank guns, but not infantry if you lack oil. A tall empire? Good luck having the resources to field a respectable army and keep the lights on.

 

[smvalentine]

Now - only on occasion - he will say "I'm not prepared to trade that" and the only option is to exit the trade screen.

That's new isn't it?

Are you seeing this when the AI has only one copy of the Luxury or multiple copies?
I think it is normal to see this in the former case.