Bugs in new version? Or em I crazy.

[Faytte]

Did a clean install.
This is for GEM by the by.

Regardless of where i start, the amount of hills, etc, its taking about 20-30 turns (depending) to produce my first worker on turn one. In a raw game, its more like 12-15 turns (my production seems halved, regardless of starting tiles).

Despite this, I have in 4 games tried to rush Stone Henge, on PRINCE difficulty (nothing hard). I did so as the Egyptian, again a few games. The AI is creating it about 20 turns before me consistently (this is a medium sized map).

What gives...? Super AI?

 

[Ahriman]

Per city production was lowered, so it takes longer to build a worker. Early gold income was massively increased, so unless you spend this (and spend it wisely) the AI will outperform you. I have no difficulty getting Stonehenge on Emperor, if you spend your gold on the right buildings.

 

[mystikx21]

I'm not sure production was lowered, or if it was only by one in the capital. Other cities actually should be higher than in GK.

Main thing is that gold is a lot higher (for most of you who didn't play later VEM versions) so it seems a lot lower.

Thal lowered gold et al slightly so it should be slightly better.

 

[Faytte]

I'm pretty concerned then. Not sure how my gold spending could overcome about a 20 turn advantage. What I would see in terms of priority then is.

Construct a granary; more people will result in more production.
Buy a worker. It seems on average in GEM you make about 13-14 gold a turn, so at i think 210 gold for a worker that will still take about 15 turns worth of gold.
And then hope for the best after that.

Also..playing india is brutal in the start. Other civs start with a happens around 5-8 it seems or higher, india starts around 4 due to the changes. The unhappiness from the amount of cities you have when you only have one city being doubled seems excessive.

 

[Ahriman]

Construct a granary; more people will result in more production.
Buy a worker. It seems on average in GEM you make about 13-14 gold a turn, so at i think 210 gold for a worker that will still take about 15 turns worth of gold.
And then hope for the best after that.

Yeah, worker and granary purchase are pretty much no-brainers, particularly when you don't need a mentor's hall or monument early for culture.

Also..playing india is brutal in the start. Other civs start with a happens around 5-8 it seems or higher, india starts around 4 due to the changes.

I suspect India's ability will be changed back to what it was in VEM.

 

[Faytte]

Yeah, worker and granary purchase are pretty much no-brainers, particularly when you don't need a mentor's hall or monument early for culture.


I suspect India's ability will be changed back to what it was in VEM.

I couldn't find anything about civ changes in VEM, just a lot about armies.

 

[Ahriman]

It looks like a lot of the old changes weren't rolled into the VEM Wiki.

From memory, India was changed to something like -20% unhappiness from population, and the Mughal Fort was replaced with an aquaduct UB "Sanitation System" that gave more food.

 

[mystikx21]

It looks like a lot of the old changes weren't rolled into the VEM Wiki.

From memory, India was changed to something like -20% unhappiness from population, and the Mughal Fort was replaced with an aquaduct UB "Sanitation System" that gave more food.

The old changes on leaders haven't been rolled in, but they're still linked up on Thal's main site as archives. http://civmodding.wordpress.com/vem/leaders/

Gandhi got +1 from growth buildings, +1 on rivers for sanitation system, started with a worker instead of a warrior, and elephants were a horseman replacement instead of chariot. He didn't have any city penalty or unhappiness nerfs in the later versions. I'd rather he had the -20% from population instead of free pop on growth buildings, which was OP.

 

[Babri]

But -20% on was extremely boring & IIRC before the new UA India constantly was rated low in fun civs polls. Maybe adjust free pop UA a bit but overall I really like the idea.

 

[Zaldron]

The old changes on leaders haven't been rolled in, but they're still linked up on Thal's main site as archives. http://civmodding.wordpress.com/vem/leaders/

Gandhi got +1 from growth buildings, +1 on rivers for sanitation system, started with a worker instead of a warrior, and elephants were a horseman replacement instead of chariot. He didn't have any city penalty or unhappiness nerfs in the later versions. I'd rather he had the -20% from population instead of free pop on growth buildings, which was OP.

I loved the free pop ability and never thought it seemed OP to me. If other people feel it is, we could reduced the number of buildings it affects. The -20% unhappiness was just boring and made him a wide-strong rather than tall-favored (which seems more flavorful).

 

[mystikx21]

I loved the free pop ability and never thought it seemed OP to me. If other people feel it is, we could reduced the number of buildings it affects. The -20% unhappiness was just boring and made him a wide-strong rather than tall-favored (which seems more flavorful).

I think the issue I had was that it appeared to affect too many buildings, and mostly early game buildings (aqueducts, granaries, I think it did water mills in one version but I can't remember). I was getting new cities up to size 4-5 immediately in the middle to later game without too much trouble.

I thought of it as a wide bonus for that reason.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Faytte
The AI stage of the beta test is very new, so it's still undergoing balance adjustments. I've included a few changes in the next update.

===========
Tall empires usually have lots of happiness, and need food to grow faster. Wide empires are usually unhappy (especially conquerors), so extra food or population can actually be detrimental. This is why I feel happiness helps wide empires more, and food/population bonuses help tall empires more.

Gandhi's trait gave +1 from the following buildings, which we can adjust when we get to the GEM:Leaders stage of the beta test.

• Granary
• Sanitation System
• Lighthouse
• Garden
• Hospital
• Medical Lab

 

[mystikx21]

@Faytte
The AI stage of the beta test is very new, so it's still undergoing balance adjustments. I've included a few changes in the next update.

===========
Tall empires usually have lots of happiness, and need food to grow faster. Wide empires are usually unhappy (especially conquerors), so extra food or population can actually be detrimental. This is why I feel happiness helps wide empires more, and food/population bonuses help tall empires more.

Gandhi's trait gave +1 from the following buildings, which we can adjust when we get to the GEM:Leaders stage of the beta test.

• Granary
• Sanitation System
• Lighthouse
• Garden
• Hospital
• Medical Lab

Right but being able to rapidly plant a city over a couple turns, add a road, granary, aqueduct, lighthouse, and colosseum and you've gotten a chunk of the happiness problems out of the way and it's already grown to a reasonable size for independent production. That sounds more like a wide-based effect than a tall one. You did counter this some by adding more unhappiness per city, so that might help. I considered it overpoweringly good for India played in the bizarre expansionist style that I like to play my games.

That can be tabled for a while though. I'm more concerned with bonuses to buildings and policies and bugs at the moment. And units.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm not really fond of a Gandhi UA that favors Wide over Tall. Gandhi's personality and I think Indian flavor favors a Tall/peaceful/builder/culture playstyle.

India should be encouraged to get lots of farms and build really huge cities; but the +1 pop from various buildings encourages the Indian player to build almost no farms and to go wide so as to be able to maximize the UA (it triggers once per city per building, so more cities means more free pop).

That's why I like the growth bonus from Sanitation system and a happiness bonus on the UA (to accomodate that massive growth).

 

[mystikx21]

I'm not really fond of a Gandhi UA that favors Wide over Tall. Gandhi's personality and I think Indian flavor favors a Tall/peaceful/builder/culture playstyle.

India should be encouraged to get lots of farms and build really huge cities; but the +1 pop from various buildings encourages the Indian player to build almost no farms and to go wide so as to be able to maximize the UA (it triggers once per city per building, so more cities means more free pop).

That's why I like the growth bonus from Sanitation system and a happiness bonus on the UA (to accomodate that massive growth).

Exactly how I was viewing it. As it was I just used villages everywhere and took the +1 rivers instead of farming. I think you could leave the +1 pop on the sanitation system itself and replace the UA as the unhappiness advantages. I didn't think that was boring if it was unshackled from a penalty for having more cities.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

as an avid Gandhi player I'll agree, it's weird that his UA does not synergize with the intended preferred playstyle.

 

[Zaldron]

I'm not really fond of a Gandhi UA that favors Wide over Tall. Gandhi's personality and I think Indian flavor favors a Tall/peaceful/builder/culture playstyle.

India should be encouraged to get lots of farms and build really huge cities; but the +1 pop from various buildings encourages the Indian player to build almost no farms and to go wide so as to be able to maximize the UA (it triggers once per city per building, so more cities means more free pop).

That's why I like the growth bonus from Sanitation system and a happiness bonus on the UA (to accomodate that massive growth).

The builtin happiness bonus favors any city at least pop 6, so it actually favors conquerors probably more than the peaceful players, with wide and tall getting about equal benefit. What about +1f on farms then (in addition to the +1 on rivers with sanitation system)?

 

[Ahriman]

What about +1f on farms then

Game-breakingly strong IMO, especially in the early game.

The builtin happiness bonus favors any city at least pop 6,

Isn't it calculated at the empire level, not the city level? So 3 cities of pop 15 each have the same effect as 9 cities of pop 5 (45 total pop, -20% means 9 less unhappiness)?

I guess what we really want is something that helps just a few cities, but its hard to see how to do that in a UA. Could a UA affect only the 4 largest cities? 2/3 unhappiness from population in the largest 4 cities?

The more I think about it, the more tempted I am to even revert to the vanilla effect, or something like it (extra unhappy per city, lower unhappy per pop). That at least encourages a Tall playstyle.

 

[Thalassicus]

A happiness bonus favors conquest, while a population bonus favors peaceful play. This is because of two factors:

• Big cities grow slower than small cities.
• Happiness is the main economic limit on conquest speed in Civ 5.

A small city takes 30 to gain +1, while a larger city might take 60 to do the same. This means a +1 effect gives twice as much food to the large city as the small one. Gandhi's population bonus helps large cities more than small ones.

The only economic factor holding conquerors back in Civ 5 is happiness. When a player conquers a city, all happiness buildings are destroyed, and attempting to occupy the city incurs a further happiness penalty. This means a happiness-neutral 10 city with two colosseums and theaters turns into a 9 city giving +13. If we give lots of happiness to Gandhi, it just makes him a really good conqueror.

This is different from earlier Civ games where conquerors had war weariness and inefficiency/corruption slowing us down.

 

[Ahriman]

Several thoughts:
a) If you have 50 positive happiness, then you have likely wasted many social policy picks on happiness policies you didn't need and wasted many hammers/gold on happiness buildings you don't need, and you might have an opportunity cost of much gold from luxuries you could have traded away but didn't.
b) Even with 50 positive happiness, a Tall India will still get benefits: 100 culture per turn from Tradition opener.
c) I think it is important for India to have a trait that favors Tall over Wide/conquest.
d) Gandhi's vanilla happiness trait does not favor conquest; 8 unhappy per city is going to put paid to any conquest rampage pretty fast.
e) The VEM trait favors Wide, while the vanilla trait favors Tall.

I'm not convinced that the vanilla trait is the best way to go; I'm open to any trait that favors Tall over Wide and leads to high population.