December Balance Beta - December 3rd (12/3)

[Gazebo]

Sry, but who was not thinking exactly this will happen, when he saw that changelog?

Underperforming jungle is nothing new. And the change increases the gap more, even I think it won't have that much influence, but it's nice to have. Wouldn't be the next step to do the same for mine improvement?
And I never really saw an AI Germany greatly overperforming, even before all the nerfs. Not like Mongols which are able to conquer 3 CS before turn 90 in most of my games. I thought that cooldown was made to deny such a snowball.
And do you really think it's OK, a trade ship costs more than a wonder in the same tech column?

I love rhetorical questions!

G

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Play before you complain.

G

I played the game, and a cargo ship cost more than twice as much as every medieval unit. One simple diplomat cost 400 while a wonder of that era cost 500. This is stupid. I have no clue how especially Venice want to afford that much of hammers to fill their trade route cap.

 

[Enginseer]

I played the game, and a cargo ship cost more than twice as much as every medieval unit. One simple diplomat cost 400 while a wonder of that era cost 500. This is stupid. I have no clue how especially Venice want to afford that much of hammers to fill their trade route cap.

Gold.

 

[Cerest]

I love rhetorical questions!

G

Similar to the comment that you replied to, one thing I've wanted for some time now but never vocalized are adjacency bonuses for GP improvements. 3 manufactories? Cool, it's now an "industrial district." Sort of like the Ruhr area in Prussia/Germany. 3 academies? I think of the early CERN and California institutes that were in close proximity. Thematically, the benefits of close proximity, especially pre-internet, is that researchers don't have to get on a camel to share data with colleagues. Similarly, with industrial zones, you don't have to "ship" goods from one area to another to get them processed. Both of these reasons increase efficiency, which is why the adjacency bonuses thematically make sense. However just because something thematically makes sense doesn't mean that they belong in the game. Currently I don't think there are enough "rewards" for GP improvement after you get the policies that increase instant yields from GP. At a certain point, it takes 300 turns to break even in science instead of just getting it now. Adjacency bonuses provide some incentive to build more GP improvements, at the cost of not benefiting too much until you build 3. Idk how to make the AI aware of this however :/

 

[chicorbeef]

Similar to the comment that you replied to, one thing I've wanted for some time now but never vocalized are adjacency bonuses for GP improvements. 3 manufactories? Cool, it's now an "industrial district." Sort of like the Ruhr area in Prussia/Germany. 3 academies? I think of the early CERN and California institutes that were in close proximity. Thematically, the benefits of close proximity, especially pre-internet, is that researchers don't have to get on a camel to share data with colleagues. Similarly, with industrial zones, you don't have to "ship" goods from one area to another to get them processed. Both of these reasons increase efficiency, which is why the adjacency bonuses thematically make sense. However just because something thematically makes sense doesn't mean that they belong in the game. Currently I don't think there are enough "rewards" for GP improvement after you get the policies that increase instant yields from GP. At a certain point, it takes 300 turns to break even in science for example when you can get 200 turns of it now. Adjacency bonuses provide some incentive to build more GP improvements, at the cost of not benefiting too much until you build 3.

GP improvements get a bunch of possible buffs over the game from techs, buildings (eg. Research Lab, Factory), policies/beliefs (eg. Knowledge Through Devotion, New Deal). More importantly, GP improvements buff the potency of their respective instant yields. For example, each Academy boosts the potency of the instant yield by 10%, each Manufactory buffs the Engineer's ability by 20%, each Great Work buffs the Writer by 4% per Great Work, etc. (I'm not sure if these numbers are fully correct, but you get the idea).

 

[tu_79]

Similar to the comment that you replied to, one thing I've wanted for some time now but never vocalized are adjacency bonuses for GP improvements. 3 manufactories? Cool, it's now an "industrial district." Sort of like the Ruhr area in Prussia/Germany. 3 academies? I think of the early CERN and California institutes that were in close proximity. Thematically, the benefits of close proximity, especially pre-internet, is that researchers don't have to get on a camel to share data with colleagues. Similarly, with industrial zones, you don't have to "ship" goods from one area to another to get them processed. Both of these reasons increase efficiency, which is why the adjacency bonuses thematically make sense. However just because something thematically makes sense doesn't mean that they belong in the game. Currently I don't think there are enough "rewards" for GP improvement after you get the policies that increase instant yields from GP. At a certain point, it takes 300 turns to break even in science instead of just getting it now. Adjacency bonuses provide some incentive to build more GP improvements, at the cost of not benefiting too much until you build 3. Idk how to make the AI aware of this however :/

You know that every GPTI increases the efficiency of the following related GP actions, don't you? Without counting that GPTI are great for happiness (which looks at yields per turn in the city).

 

[Stalker0]

I played the game, and a cargo ship cost more than twice as much as every medieval unit. One simple diplomat cost 400 while a wonder of that era cost 500.

Though the tone is not the best, this seems a valid complaint. That is quite a lot of hammers for a disposable unit.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I played the game, and a cargo ship cost more than twice as much as every medieval unit. One simple diplomat cost 400 while a wonder of that era cost 500. This is stupid. I have no clue how especially Venice want to afford that much of hammers to fill their trade route cap.

Started a Venice game and found that out the hard way...

Considering there was a nerf to TR, I think the production scaling is too much.

 

[pineappledan]

It's weird because production costs really take off in industrial. By then, the flat scaling isn't enough. However, Medieval/Renaissance build costs are simply not that high.

I'm also curious what this scaling does to enlightenment era?

 

[Gazebo]

Though the tone is not the best, this seems a valid complaint. That is quite a lot of hammers for a disposable unit.

I’m not disputing the value of feedback. I just don’t care about armchair feedback all that much relative to gameplay feedback.

The beta numbers aren’t final obviously. We’ll see how it plays out.

G

 

[Rekk]

Artists - now generate GAP instead of Golden Age turns

• Base value is 1/2 of the base GAP needed for your first Golden Age (so ~ 375)
• Scales off of Tourism and GAP (past 5 turns), and is buffed by 10% for every Themed

What does this mean? It only scales off of Great Works of Art that are creating a theme bonus?

 

[Enginseer]

Every Theming Bonus contributes to the Artists' powers.

 

[Gazebo]

Hotfix for the wonder policy and the progress tech bugs posted.

https://mega.nz/#F!2Jdw3aQT!Z49gV7KAyMq6YiG5BD9jaA

G

 

[Rekk]

Every Theming Bonus contributes to the Artists' powers.

Isn't that different from the Great Writer & Great Musician benefits? Don't Concert Tour and Political Treatise scale strictly off the number of Great Works of Writing/Music?

Although, the Civilopedia entry for Political Treatise implies that it scales off of ALL Great Works, not just Writing.

 

[arthurF]

Aaannd we're back to the bad old days of huge happiness/unhappiness swings...last two patches. What'd you do, G?

 

[Owlbebach]

Aaannd we're back to the bad old days of huge happiness/unhappiness swings...last two patches. What'd you do, G?

I first time faced them in my last game in previous patch, but that was because i ignored many buildings that reduce distress and boredom (like zoos, it is a completely useless building). Also that was due to ideological pressure. Maybe it the case? I mean ideological pressure can generate like 30 unhappiness and it happens suddenly, when a threshold is passed

 

[Cerest]

GP improvements get a bunch of possible buffs over the game from techs, buildings (eg. Research Lab, Factory), policies/beliefs (eg. Knowledge Through Devotion, New Deal). More importantly, GP improvements buff the potency of their respective instant yields. For example, each Academy boosts the potency of the instant yield by 10%, each Manufactory buffs the Engineer's ability by 20%, each Great Work buffs the Writer by 4% per Great Work, etc. (I'm not sure if these numbers are fully correct, but you get the idea).

You know that every GPTI increases the efficiency of the following related GP actions, don't you? Without counting that GPTI are great for happiness (which looks at yields per turn in the city).

Yes! It's in the tooltip. But it still doesn't change how, at a certain point of the game, you get say, "300" turns of equivalent science immediately or a steady stream of science when there's only ~200 turns left. There will come a point where it's more efficient to just use instant yields. Adjacency bonuses simply just push back the date at which that becomes viable.

When I play Arabia for instance I like Knowledge Through Devotion (to be able to spam archaeologists for the historic events in artistry) and what I do whenever I get a great scientist is that I look at the tooltip yield (which includes the bonuses from preexisting academies + policies) and look at a preexisting academy's yields in a developed city (which includes GPI bonuses like Knowledge Through Devotion) and just do some math. (Instant Yield) / (Improvement Yield) = Number of turns til it breaks even. The (instant yield) is just the tooltip, the (improvement yield) is more complicated and I make a series of scalars to determine the value of other yields (like faith, food, or production).

Regardless, even with Knowledge Through Devotion, Instant yields are better at Modern+. And that's really a shame. That's not even factoring whether or not I am racing the AI for a specific tech (where instant yields would be better), so it may even come sooner than Modern+.

 

[Cruelsader]

A bug report. Played yesterday as Siam. Noticed that diplo units cost a ton but are supposed to give a ton of influence. In reality the influence boost has not been increased, at least not for the first tier diplomat: it is supposed to give 100 influence according to the build screen info but actually only provides 30 influence.

Sorry for spamming here instead of posting to Github but I do not have internet access at home and I do not want to upload game files via work computer.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes! It's in the tooltip. But it still doesn't change how, at a certain point of the game, you get say, "300" turns of equivalent science immediately or a steady stream of science when there's only ~200 turns left. There will come a point where it's more efficient to just use instant yields. Adjacency bonuses simply just push back the date at which that becomes viable.

When I play Arabia for instance I like Knowledge Through Devotion (to be able to spam archaeologists for the historic events in artistry) and what I do whenever I get a great scientist is that I look at the tooltip yield (which includes the bonuses from preexisting academies + policies) and look at a preexisting academy's yields in a developed city (which includes GPI bonuses like Knowledge Through Devotion) and just do some math. (Instant Yield) / (Improvement Yield) = Number of turns til it breaks even. The (instant yield) is just the tooltip, the (improvement yield) is more complicated and I make a series of scalars to determine the value of other yields (like faith, food, or production).

Regardless, even with Knowledge Through Devotion, Instant yields are better at Modern+. And that's really a shame. That's not even factoring whether or not I am racing the AI for a specific tech (where instant yields would be better), so it may even come sooner than Modern+.

Your change doesn’t fix that though, it just means settling is basically always better than bulbojg until the end of the game. It still means one is superior to the other, it remains a math excercise.

 

[Rekk]

A bug report. Played yesterday as Siam. Noticed that diplo units cost a ton but are supposed to give a ton of influence. In reality the influence boost has not been increased, at least not for the first tier diplomat: it is supposed to give 100 influence according to the build screen info but actually only provides 30 influence.

Sorry for spamming here instead of posting to Github but I do not have internet access at home and I do not want to upload game files via work computer.

To be honest, that's been a EUI display bug for a while now (since before this beta). The amount of influence they are supposed to give has not been changed.

It's the unit's promotions that state how much influence a diplomatic unit will actually give.