Beta v4.X - General Discussion

[Thalassicus]

I don't think it's possible to dumb things down enough so the AI is as good at planning as a human... and if we did, would it be a fun game to play? I generally place more emphasis on fun and gameplay balance for the human. I don't like the fact the AI is dumb, but their production bonuses and such still make the game challenging.

 

[Ahriman]

I generally place more emphasis on human "fun factor" and gameplay balance over AI capability.

This can be problematic, particularly in a game where the AI is already weak.
Going for a "locally" fun mechanic is not really good if it reduces the overall "global" fun of the game by making the AI weaker.

No matter how simple buildings are the AI's never going to be as good at planning as the human player.

So? That's no excuse for introducing more mechanics that the AI can't understand. Just because the AI will never be as good as a human doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to avoid having it lag even further behind.

There's a tradeoff, clearly, but whether the AI can handle a mechanic or tweak should *always* be a high value concern.

I also don't find it personally fun to have no inherent advantage from being near a river in the early game. It kinda undermines the whole premise of real civilization, where real early cities were nearly all founded on a major river.

 

[Thalassicus]

v4.15 beta brings:

• Arabia's trait now increases trade route income by 10% (was +1 per city). Overall income is about the same in an empire of five 10 cities and five 5 cities, with less gold in a more ICS-oriented empire, and more gold in a highly populated empire.
• Knight tech now requires only Civil Service and Horseback Riding.
• Cavalry tech swapped with Fertilizer.
• Aqueduct and Baths of Trajan moved to former 'trapping' tech, which is now Sanitation. Sanitation is a Classical Era tech focusing on population growth and the economy, unlocking Aqueducts, Baths, and Villages. Civilopedia text:

The earliest evidence of urban sanitation was seen in the Indus Valley civilization (2600–1900 BCE). In the cities of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Rakhigarhi, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets.

Roman cities and Roman villas had elements of sanitation systems, delivering water in the streets of towns such as Pompeii, and building stone and wooden drains to collect and remove wastewater from populated areas. One example is the Cloaca Maxima (built c.600 BCE) draining into the River Tiber in Rome.

 

[gandalf51]

This can be problematic, particularly in a game where the AI is already weak.
Going for a "locally" fun mechanic is not really good if it reduces the overall "global" fun of the game by making the AI weaker.


So? That's no excuse for introducing more mechanics that the AI can't understand. Just because the AI will never be as good as a human doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to avoid having it lag even further behind.

There's a tradeoff, clearly, but whether the AI can handle a mechanic or tweak should *always* be a high value concern.

I also don't find it personally fun to have no inherent advantage from being near a river in the early game. It kinda undermines the whole premise of real civilization, where real early cities were nearly all founded on a major river.

I also think that AI should be able to use new mechanics.


About river why not simply made them trade routes, like in reality ?
So remove the gold bonus, but make them connect towns (and increase gold from Trade Routes to balance) and maybe increase cost of roads to 1.5 or 2 gold to make rivers useful.


About the beta 4.08 I find the maintenance of the lighthouse a little too high and the one of the water mill way too high (as now its main use is to give gold, like a market or a bank).

 

[Sneaks]

I really don't like the requirement for watermills to get the tile gold yield. In my tests so far, the AI has seemed less likely to settle on rivers, thus crippling their own economy. Adding it to the watermill honestly feels imbalanced.

As far as villages: First, I would remove the early tent graphic and instead use the solid buildings from the start. Second, 3 techs deep is far too far for the improvement. As I stated earlier, I think the better logical place for this would be Pottery, as it is now the only Tier 1 tech without an improvement.

What might be the reason for removing the Currency requirement for Chivalry? I cannot really see a positive reason to do it other than making beelining knights easier.

I'm not really sure that Arabia needs a nerf, either. The bazaar seems to promote a policy of horizontal growth, and given the other numerous nerfs to ICSing, I don't know whether this makes sense.

 

[Thalassicus]

@gandalf51
It's not possible to make rivers trade routes. I lowered the maintenance of lighthouses in a recent beta build.

@Sneaks
If it's just an AI concern I can deal with that separately. It's very difficult to balance start locations without delaying or removing the river gold.

Graphical modifications are somewhat of a low priority for me.. and I don't want to tread on other people's work (there's been 2 trading post mods).

You're understanding the buff to Knights correctly. Their cost and strength are the same as longswords, so the main difference between the two is tech accessibility. Since knights are considered underpowered it's something I want to try out. The same reason applies to the Cavalry buff (no longer requires Economics).

Something that's been discussed is buffing the strength of Knights, but I hesitate doing that because strength balance is a very fragile thing. Just a few strength points one way or another can significantly alter combat odds. Something I've been considering though is an open-terrain bonus...

Arabia has the same gold income as before if average city size is 8. My average city pop is always bigger than this so it's a buff for my games as Harun. I could lower this equilibrium level if you'd like... I didn't want to overdo it because the bazaar is buffed (35% from 25%) and camels were buffed (+15% and Chivalry tech is more accessible).


==========
I came to post about the Knights/Cavalry topic in fact... if people have a chance, please try a beeline to those to see if it's feasible. I want to see if going for these is no longer an underpowered strategy (as they were in vanilla). In .15 they're about as easy/hard to get as their footsoldier counterparts... both require 2 classical techs and 2 medieval techs. Knights are still somewhat weaker because they're hard-countered by pikes and Civil Service is cheaper than Metal Casting, but not by much. If necessary I could give them some sort of combat boost.

 

[Sneaks]

I get not wanting to touch the graphics, but you're not actually replacing any of the graphic models with the tweak I suggested. You're just using a vanilla one earlier. Any graphical tweak to that vanilla asset will still properly show. A village of tents just doesn't make any sense.

I understand the desire for that change to knights then. Honestly I would really like to see Knights buffed. Knights historically were the elite soldiers pretty much until firearms became common enough to equip basic infantry with them.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'd like to at least see them at least on equal footing with longswords, and in vanilla they're rather underwhelming. There's some drawbacks to particular types of bonuses:

• A speed boost to Knights and/or Cavalry makes it difficult to give Lancers a proper role (who I also want to adjust... they aren't particularly thrilling right now).
• A strength boost would likely require a strength boost to their counter units as well, leading to somewhat of a chain reaction of balance adjustments.
• What sets them apart most from their footsoldier brethren is accessibility. If both techs are about equally challenging to get, with equal cost and equal strength, it might be a good place to set balance at. Knights/Cavalry would have 50% faster speed, while Longswords/Rifles have better defensive and city siege capabilities.

I understand what you're getting at about the graphics, mainly the reason I didn't mess with them is the two other people who have done mods for those... would make more sense for them to do it.

If you can point out what changes would be required in the files though, I could add it as an optional side-component to this mod. I was actually thinking about splitting this particular change off into its own subfolder... since it's purely a text/graphical thing and some people might like it better as the old trading post style.

 

[Joneill]

I like the tech-changes for chivalry and military science in .15, very nice.

• A speed boost to Knights and/or Cavalry makes it difficult to give Lancers a proper role (who I also want to adjust... they aren't particularly thrilling right now).

Still think this would be the simplest solution, bring the three mounted units in one line of direct upgrades (horseman-knight-cavalry) and deal with the lancer separately. As you said, any strengthboost or multiplier (even if only on open terrain) will require balancing of other units, too.

Suggestions for Lancers: Greater Mobility might be a good theme here, but more than 4 moves is probably too much for a regular unit. So maybe ignoring terrain costs, free pillage moves (like sipahi) or a similar mobility enhancement may work? If it was possible, ignoring ZoC would certainly be an interesting feature...
Exchanging or complementing the anti-cavalry bonus with a more general anti-mounted or open terrain attack bonus might also work.

 

[Sneaks]

Knights are such a sticky situation. Honestly, I would just go with a combat strength buff and call it a day.

 

[gandalf51]

@gandalf51
It's not possible to make rivers trade routes.

I don't understand why they removed that from Civ4 (and trade routes with other capitals, spying, religion, ....)

I lowered the maintenance of lighthouses in a recent beta build.

And about the maintenance of water mill ?

 

[SSgtDuke]

If knights and cavalry have 4 movement (I'm not sure if this was implemented) and can move after attacking, I think these are balanced bonuses compared to footsoldier terrain defence bonuses and lack of hard counters. I could see giving horse units an additional 10% attack bonus on open terrain, but I'd be wary of increasing their base strength.

 

[Hebuubi]

About this new research agreement system...not so sure how well it will work since I found it almost impossible to keep friendly relationship vs. any AI. Last game I was playing as Persia ((L.E.M), I love playing that map), Immortal level. At the beginning(after researching philosophy) I signed friendships with India, Russia and Germany as they requested it. Then after few turn Russia decided to "tell the world about my sins" which caused chain denounciation. India, Germany, Rome, Greece and Songhai found too reasons to denounce me. Then 2 turn later they all DoW me... So until the crazy AI behavior can be somehow modified, (having high hopes for WWGD next release), I prefer the old research agreement system. You could even make even more expensive, or somehow scale the cost with the map size? I think it's better to keep going alone than agreeing any friendships with AI because they are just going to stab you anyway for no reason, which causes the whole world to hate you and screws your all trade relationships.

 

[Ahriman]

I signed friendships with India, Russia and Germany as they requested it

Friendships are supposed to be hard to maintain. You should expect to get in trouble if you sign Friendship with every player.
You need to think strategically, and only sign friendship agreements with players that you're really going to work with, and aren't likely to see you as a threat or covet your stuff.

 

[alpaca]

I also don't find it personally fun to have no inherent advantage from being near a river in the early game. It kinda undermines the whole premise of real civilization, where real early cities were nearly all founded on a major river.

From a realism point of view, cities away from fresh water should be capped at fairly small sizes, increasing as technology progresses. Getting food from nearby sources of water from fishing or farming should carry a kind of "food tax", that is a loss due to having to feed people and animals that transport it. Fresh water is a more important concern for settling anywhere than anything else, period. Only with modern kinds of transportation have we been able to settle some places with very little naturally available water, and at a very high cost, for example when mining gems in a desert.

You could argue, though, that the game only depicts the very largest rivers, and grassland and plains should be taken to have some sources of fresh water that are simply not worth mentioning on the map. If you look at it like that, the representation in the game makes a lot more sense as you don't necessarily have to settle near a very large river, a smaller stream suffices. The bonus from these large rivers was typically trade, represented by gold, although I would personally like a local trade bonus better if the city is built next to a a river.

 

[Ahriman]

You could argue, though, that the game only depicts the very largest rivers, and grassland and plains should be taken to have some sources of fresh water that are simply not worth mentioning on the map. If you look at it like that, the representation in the game makes a lot more sense as you don't necessarily have to settle near a very large river, a smaller stream suffices. The bonus from these large rivers was typically trade, represented by gold

I agree with all this, which is part of why it is so weird to me for the gold bonus to be attached to the watermill. It feels wrong from both a gameplay perspective and a realism perspective.

I don't think making rivers act as trade routes is a great solution though, I think we're better off if we still have to use roads for trade route connection.
And I'm not sure that boosting "trade routes" between major cities is the right solution; I think a tile yield bonus for riverside tiles is just fine. Farms are more profitable if they can ship their goods along the river, so are towns, so is everything else.

 

[Thalassicus]

What if I eliminate the commerce bonus from the watermill and move the riverside trade bonus on villages/TPs to an early tech like Sailing?

==============================
v4.16 beta

Implemented a fix for a submarine bug BomberEscort pointed out in this thread here.

• +1 sight range for Submarines and Nuclear Submarines.
• To see submarines, destroyers now must be adjacent to the submarine or attempt to move onto its hex.
• Also, I fixed a bug with maritime citystate food distribution preventing them from working in 4.15.

 

[Ahriman]

What if I eliminate the commerce bonus from the watermill and move the riverside trade bonus to an early tech like Sailing?

Yes, I think that would work very well, giving land powers some incentive to go for sailing early.

If sailing is getting over-crowded, then you could buff the great lighthouse and move it to optics.

See the other thread for my concerns about making subs too hard for the AI to spot.

Should a single submarine really be able to destroy an entire fleet of ships by itself, because they can only be spotted by destroyers and subs?

 

[Sneaks]

I seriously dislike the destroyer changes. The one thing destroyers were designed for was hunting down submarines and torpedo boats. Destroyers were notoriously difficult for submarines to ever sink because they sat high in the water, leaving not much for a target. By allowing submarines to literally sink destroyers while in hidden range, you effectively make them better 1 on 1 against their own counter.

Submarines were never spectacularly great against other military vessels, and were primarily destroyers of merchant ships, etc.

That being said, I always see their primary purpose in game as being able to swiftly destroy unprotected transports.

 

[Ahriman]

Thal, which thread would you like the sub discussion in?

The one thing destroyers were designed for was hunting down submarines and torpedo boats.

IRL? Sure. But in Civ5 they're the basic generic naval unit. An ASW role is too narrow for a generic unit. Particularly if subs lack an effective role of their own!

That being said, I always see their primary purpose in game as being able to swiftly destroy unprotected transports.

But they do this no better than any other unit (and worse than most, because other units are faster), and there's no real way to *make* them do this better. And this is far too narrow a role for a Civ unit type.

Real life (where we have frigates, destroyers, cruisers, commerce raiders, gunboats, battleships, aircraft carriers, attack subs, ICBM subs, transports, civilian trade ships, etc) allows far more specialization than Civ does.

I suspect we need a situation where destroyers are very good vs subs if the destroyer fires first, but where subs are also very good vs destroyers if the sub fires first. However, the destroyer could have longer visual range and will have higher movement, so the destroyer will nearly always fire first.

If destroyers >> subs, why would you ever build a sub?