Community Patch-undocumented changes

Araxyllis

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Religion spread works different (no standard spread of 6 on standard speed, it seems like a new more complicated formula) and the Halikarnossos Wonder does not only give 100 gold, it gives more depending in which era you are when using GP(information Era gives 800 for example)

There is nothing in the patch notes that indicates these changes, and Halikarnossos totally breaks the balance. You get more gold from this than everything else combined which makes this mod unusable for MP

I installed the Vox Populi Community Patch with all the other Stuff(balance patch, more luxuries etc) but am currently only using the standard community patch cause standard AI sucks. I only activated this one in the mod menu and let the others unchecked. I used some other mods with it, but I tested it with only the community patch and IGE to speed the testing up, and religion and Halikarnossos are still changed.

I thought the game balance changes would be in the balance patch, and thought that the community patch is Bugfix, UI fix, and AI fix only. Did I make a mistake by installing all mod components? Is this considered a bugfix like the great writer and scientist value thats set when you get them instead of using them?

These are the notes I read https://docs.google.com/document/d/...aBPMTc6sXmKU8ERlg/edit#heading=h.ivkw6hmrx9ss

it says version 1.3.23 and the patch is 2.4.21 but these are the newest notes i could find, and they are also linked from this forum
 
Religion Spread becomes more movement-based. If your cities are connected with roads and such, religion spreads a lot faster while war will slow down its effect. Since it isn't a radio wave, religion pressure gets more optimization and the game process a lot faster with it.
 
Religion Spread becomes more movement-based. If your cities are connected with roads and such, religion spreads a lot faster while war will slow down its effect. Since it isn't a radio wave, religion pressure gets more optimization and the game process a lot faster with it.

Thats an awesome mechanic! Finally some reason to build roads to city states that doesnt have a quest for it. It will enhance MP experience, that for sure.

Halikarnossos will not. combined with Pisa tower and freedom ideology it gets even more crazy. It actually gets good again to wait before using some GP, which they actually tried to eliminate with the patch. It also buffs korea even more, one of the strongest civs in the game. on normal game speed it generated like 10k gold by turn 200 for me.
 
Well, the point of MP is banning everything remotely powerful, so you just ban Korea the same way you ban Venice.
 
From beginning:
1. Honor gain culture at the rate of 1.5 strength of barbarian units instead of 1.0. Maybe it just scaled for game speed (I play on Epic speed).
2. 30 faith from ruin instead of 20. Maybe same scaling.
 
Gravedig bad
 
Some other undocumented changes to the CP include Siege Units no longer needing to setup but instead moving more slowly in enemy borders, and similarly there's something to do with Naval Units in ocean though I can't remember off-hand. It's hard to see how necessary these changes are but I guess it comes down to improving the AI? Would be nice to have the option to toggle off, however, as they diminish the human player's experience for some - though IMO these changes, since they actually impact direct gameplay, should be opt-in not opt-out.

I'm always hesitant to recommend CP to people not interested in VP who conflate the two, because the biggest sell is the tagline 'it only improves AI and expands modding functionality.' Such changes don't necessarily make that false but idk. Because of JFDLC's dependency on CP, creeping changes that have tangible impacts upon the gameplay also make me rather anxious.
 
Another undocumented which I learned only yesterday here.

Apparently surrounding a city boosts strength by 20% and the city under siege does not heal.
 
and similarly there's something to do with Naval Units in ocean though I can't remember off-hand
Early navy can traverse ocean if there's a visible coastal tile past it. I don't know if it's feasible to add a toggle option to those changes, but if it isn't I'm against any change to them since they're all around improvements to QoL and AI performance. Besides, these changes are old and VP is getting closer to finalizing more than anything.

Edit:
Well, I doubt the two you mentioned are possible to toggle in-game since they were specifically for the AI. I also remember G saying that installer toggle options aren't gonna be a thing or something to that effect.
 
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QoL in and of itself is subjective, so should not be the basis for features like this.

Something like the Naval Ranged Units is quite radical, because its a marked shift from the player's tangible experience in vanilla - from actual gamplay experience of interacting with one's own units. Does this change account for unique Naval Ranged Units?

Anyway, I meant game defines rather than user settings or toggle options. Improvement to AI or not, these two examples are undeniably departures from the vanilla game's actionable experience - its not something that operates behind the scenes, or beyond the human player's faculties - and that's not something that should be mandatory in the CP. There's always been much more weight to launching a siege attack thanks to having to use a separate button to launch it and, for me at least, the idea of that being removed is just diminishing - not a QoL at all.

It is a bit late in the development of the CP to be raising these issues but to claim that that is a good reason not to make adjustments seems fallacious.

My time and energy is stretched thin as it is though, and as much as I would prefer the CP to regress (or rather shift to CBP) or make optional (even if opt out) changes like this, I'm not about to push the issue - especially since I don't know of anything more than the Naval and Siege changes, and if there were more, its not really feasible to discuss everything myself. So I'm not arguing for something to be done, just giving my voice to the issue, because I do think those in this subforum have a tendency to get tunnel vision - unable to see what those who want nothing more than the CP wish for. Sure, you may think it improves the QoL of the game, but for some others, myself included, when you start to take away the player's tangible vanilla experience for the sake of the AI, its diminishing instead.
 
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QoL in and of itself is subjective, so should not be the basis for features like this.

Something like the Naval Ranged Units is quite radical. Does this change account for unique Naval Ranged Units?

Anyway, I meant game defines rather than user settings. Improvement to AI or not, they're undeniably departures from the vanilla game's actionable experience - its not something that operates behind the scenes, or beyond the human player's faculties - and that's not something that should be mandatory in the CP. It is a bit late in the development of the CP to be raising these issues but to claim that that is a good reason not to make adjustments seems fallacious. My time and energy is stretched thin as it is though, and as much as I would prefer the CP to regress or make optional (even if opt out) changes like this, I'm not about to push the issue - especially since I don't know of anything more than the Naval and Siege changes, and if there were more, its not really feasible to discuss everything. But I do think those in this subforum have a tendency to get tunnel vision - unable to see what those who want a more vanilla ++ experience see when such changes are made. Sure, you may think it improves the QoL of the game, but for some others, myself included, when you start to take away the player's vanilla experience for the sake of the AI, its diminishing instead.
I don't know what you mean by the naval ranged units. The only naval gameplay change in the CP I know of is the ocean thing, and the range mentioned by Rekk is limited to the CBO I think.

I was trying to address your concern over creeping changes when I said VP is finalizing. I don't know the impact vanilla players feel over the gameplay changes present in the CP, but since their purpose was for the AI AND streamlined some of the more tedious aspects of gameplay in the process (coastal movement and clicking more for siege was always a pain), I'm not a fan of changing the current state of things if it isn't a simple matter of making it toggeable. More specifically, in the case that there were to be a separate CP suited for untouched vanilla gameplay in JFDLC, I wouldn't approve since it should be easy for the user to decide on whether they want further improvements on AI tactics/performance(unsure of the impact on both) .
 
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Since when was the purpose of the CP to judge what is and is not tedious? And to conduct streamlining therein? Definitely news to me. The CP is stated as "not modifying any of the core game's content (such as leaders or buildings), but improving AI performance and addresses a number of bugs that remained after the final Civilization V patch." These changes might justifiably be considered AI performance enhancements even if I personally think they go too far, but issues of streamlining and judgements on tedium should be left out, simply because, as I've said, they're not tedius to some (i.e. me) and indeed add to the gameplay experience.

I'm not really sure what you mean by your last statement.

But yeah, if Gazebo can't or is unwilling to make them toggleable (even if internally), then I'm ultimately powerless to do much and energyless to argue otherwise. But just so its clear, there are people that don't like changes like this, that consider them as going too far into the realm of altering gameplay, and I think falling back on it as a QoL improvement and therefore as justified is doomed to failure because that's entirely subjective and against the stated goal of the CP.
 
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ince when was the purpose of the CP to judge what is and is not tedious? And to conduct streamlining therein?
That's my judgement. My own little voice that I added to my argument which happens to be entirely based on whether these gameplay changes are easily toggeble. Like I said, the changes were made for the AI and the streamlining was just extra. The CP also states that it does everything with minimal gameplay changes, so given that those fall under AI improvements, it's nothing new.

My last statement goes back to me only being against any changes to the status quo in the case that it's not easy to toggle. I'm fine with what you're asking for so far. I just think it's weird that you're here instead of github, since you know better than me when it comes to support on such topics.
 
Guess I just wanted to voice my concerns but not really act on them via GitHub because I'm not 100% back on Civ V modding right now and hoped someone else might push it through the proper channels instead. But I suppose I should :p
 
Well actually, fwiw, I did bring one of these two changes up over a year ago, but got a fairly dismissive response without much explanation for why the change is not optional - because it improves the AI doesn't really justify the gameplay impact to me. Couldn't the human player still require to setup and the AI have this change? I think other options could have been explored, and perhaps I should have raised it had I not been so stifled. But whatever, I guess. Ofc if it's just practically not possible then I'm caterwauling and can be ignored :p
https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/3197
 
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Ranged Naval units lose 1 range but gain "move after attack".

This had better be a CBP change rather than a CP change, because it sounds broke af; Logistics allows Frigates to annihilate any city, and so I don't see how making it a global thing can lead to interesting combat. Maybe more CBP things would improve it but /shrug.

The change Jifford is thinking about is the movement change; Naval Units being able to traverse Ocean before Astronomy so long as they don't end their turn. Iirc it was a documented change, with the goal of making movement easier for the AI, but I do roll my eyes at it every time because it just feels like an artificial crutch on exploration.

I don't know what you mean by the naval ranged units. The only naval gameplay change in the CP I know of is the ocean thing, and the range mentioned by Rekk is limited to the CBO I think.

I was trying to address your concern over creeping changes when I said VP is finalizing. I don't know the impact vanilla players feel over the gameplay changes present in the CP, but since their purpose was for the AI AND streamlined some of the more tedious aspects of gameplay in the process (coastal movement and clicking more for siege was always a pain), I'm not a fan of changing the current state of things if it isn't a simple matter of making it toggeable. More specifically, in the case that there were to be a separate CP suited for untouched vanilla gameplay in JFDLC, I wouldn't approve since it should be easy for the user to decide on whether they want further improvements on AI tactics/performance(unsure of the impact on both) .

How does removing the set up Mission make it less tedious than a movement penalty? Again, it feels so artificial, and it doesn't even solve the issue that Siege Units are traditionally seen as weak because if anything it makes them weaker. I don't see how it'd help the AI either, since again it's a nerf more than a crutch.

I don't see how these changes can't be made toggleable. The database can obviously be accessed by the DLL, and these changes can be handled by branches based on these values. At the very least they could've been made toggleable through proper implementation: make the movement penalty a new column in UnitPromotions, rather than modifying MustSetUpToRangeAttack in the DLL. And if they are toggleable through one of the CP's tables, then I agree with Jifford that they should definitely be opt-in since the CBP could then opt players in by itself anyway.

While not all the changes are undocumented, a lot of them go beyond the CP's mandate of being fixes rather than balance changes. Even though I like some of them - changes in UnitCombatType allowing you to reselect now mismatched Promotions is qt, but does still push the bounds of patch.

Idk I spent too long writing this so it's probably a mess.

As a finisher, I may as well note that Reliquary scales in the same way as Halicarnassus, and that Great Wall was nerfed in a completely needless way by having the movement penalty only be applied while crossing into the civ's borders - like yeah it was strong before but it was also highly situational and by no means deserving of a nerf that makes it nigh on useless tbh. Afaik neither were mentioned in notes. Oh yeah ofc there's also the part where the CP brakes GetReligionCreatedByPlayer but at least they eventually provided an alternative method for that :rolleyes:
 
Another changes:
1. Other bonuses for Sity-States quests. For example, 39 for barbarian's camp destruction, but 80 for luxury resource finding.
2. I found a bug: no gold from religion with Tithe (+1 Gold for every 4 followers of this religion)
 
How does removing the set up Mission make it less tedious than a movement penalty? Again, it feels so artificial, and it doesn't even solve the issue that Siege Units are traditionally seen as weak because if anything it makes them weaker. I don't see how it'd help the AI either, since again it's a nerf more than a crutch.

I don't see how these changes can't be made toggleable. The database can obviously be accessed by the DLL, and these changes can be handled by branches based on these values. At the very least they could've been made toggleable through proper implementation: make the movement penalty a new column in UnitPromotions, rather than modifying MustSetUpToRangeAttack in the DLL. And if they are toggleable through one of the CP's tables, then I agree with Jifford that they should definitely be opt-in since the CBP could then opt players in by itself anyway.

While not all the changes are undocumented, a lot of them go beyond the CP's mandate of being fixes rather than balance changes. Even though I like some of them - changes in UnitCombatType allowing you to reselect now mismatched Promotions is qt, but does still push the bounds of patch.

Idk I spent too long writing this so it's probably a mess.

As a finisher, I may as well note that Reliquary scales in the same way as Halicarnassus, and that Great Wall was nerfed in a completely needless way by having the movement penalty only be applied while crossing into the civ's borders - like yeah it was strong before but it was also highly situational and by no means deserving of a nerf that makes it nigh on useless tbh. Afaik neither were mentioned in notes. Oh yeah ofc there's also the part where the CP brakes GetReligionCreatedByPlayer but at least they eventually provided an alternative method for that :rolleyes:
I'm not a good intermediary between the CP and VP, technically nor otherwise. Gameplay changes are heavily discussed by the VP community, not vanilla or JFDLC players. If anything negatively affects vanilla gameplay, then ask for help on github. JFD seemed satisfied with @ilteroi 's answer and closed his thread on the naval thing without argument.

I'm gonna step a bit beyond my place here, but you guys did separate yourselves from the Community Patch Project a bit. I'd be happy to see more varied discussion on both this subforum and github. Just recently I saw G mention on github that people don't speak up unless to complain...

Edit:
Also, I do remember being annoyed by the extra time it takes to get siege in range sometimes. It's been a long time since I last played... They're pretty important in VP tho
 
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