[R&F] December Update Video Thread

[agonistes]

I still wish they would work to adjust the game so that civs can conquer one another completely. As is, city walls pretty much shut down offensive wars, and it really hurts warring civs due to the expended resources rarely yielding much. Most of the time, the AI units fail to do much against each other, and especially against a human.

I wonder if a mod to reduce city and wall strength (likely significantly) would lead to a more exciting game.

You want to make conquest easier????

Dear god. I'd rather see capitals get auto mid walls at game start.

 

[Francel]

Tychus Findlay voice: "Hell, it's about time."

 

[Taefin]

You want to make conquest easier????

Dear god. I'd rather see capitals get auto mid walls at game start.

Radiant Stronger Cities can be tuned to get any balance that you like of player-AI and AI-AI district defense and CS against districts. You can increase the ancient wall defense to achieve this. This way conquest can be made more challenging for the player and easy enough for the AI that it actually happens. It’s still not really going to happen very often, unless you make other changes, due to their conservative/peaceful programming.

Edit: I read a little closer, there’s other mods to get walls at start, I believe, you can also use RSS to add city range attack prior to walls, or buff city health from 400 to 200 to give some of the effect of walls without quite requiring siege from the start.

 

[DWilson]

You want to make conquest easier????

Dear god. I'd rather see capitals get auto mid walls at game start.

I want it to be easier for the AI. I expect an AI that can snowball is more deadly with a normal AI with better defenses.

But perhaps the answer is to give AI other changes so that their experience is weaker walls, rather than actually making them weaker, which can be abused/utilized by players.

And as @Taefin said, there needs to be more changes.

My hope overall would be to get at least back to Civ V, where the AI wasn't particularly good, but could conquer each other and enable snowballing, which did provide more interesting challenges.

 

[Stringer1313]

I want it to be easier for the AI. I expect an AI that can snowball is more deadly with a normal AI with better defenses.

But perhaps the answer is to give AI other changes so that their experience is weaker walls, rather than actually making them weaker, which can be abused/utilized by players.

And as @Taefin said, there needs to be more changes.

My hope overall would be to get at least back to Civ V, where the AI wasn't particularly good, but could conquer each other and enable snowballing, which did provide more interesting challenges.

I will say that in my recent games, the AI has actually done a good job not all out eliminating, but substantially dominating other civs. I have a snowball situation right now where an AI has taken 80% of its continent and is snowballing like crazy.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Or the more restrained uilleann or Northumbrian pipes!

In fact, there are more 'restrained' (smaller) bagpipes from Northumbria, Ireland, and the Basque country of northern Spain. Basically, wherever people herded sheep they discovered that you could make a bag out of a sheep hide, add some bone pipes to it, and make noise/music. There is some evidence that the Thracians in the Classical Era (who had both mountains and sheep) had bagpipes - which since they were neighbors of the Classical Greeks brings a whole new imagery and sound to a potential 'Greek Civilization' . . .

What I did was pick all the valid wonders I want in my game (24 of them), and save that map configuration. Then, each time I start a new game, load that pre-made config, select map size and type, civs, and remember to change the random seed. It's a little cumbersome; but less so than having to reselect the natural wonders each time.

@sukritact has a Wonder-Picker Mod that allows you to select precisely what Wonders you want included AND precisely what Wonders you want excluded. That should allow you to get just the right configuration of Wonders for whatever type of game you want to play with a lot less effort.
I confess to a weakness for selecting those Wonders from the same continent as the Civ I'm playing, so that if I'm playing Mayans or Aztecs or Incas I select 'American' Wonders like Patiti or Fountain of Youth or Galapagos. I never select as many as the Map can hold, so there are still surprises for my Scouts.
But if I'm playing on an Arid-Hot map (desert) Uluru can be selected for inclusion regardless of whether Australia is!

 

[Taefin]

My hope overall would be to get at least back to Civ V, where the AI wasn't particularly good, but could conquer each other and enable snowballing, which did provide more interesting challenges.

This time around (after the patch will have reset game files) I’ll put some of my tweaks into the a mod and share that, might take 2-3 weeks. But at least it will give everyone a few key parameters they can play with in one go-to file to make dramatic ages and/or AI conquest better. It’s definitely possible though, and probably the key is to get the AI aggressive enough without inadvertently leaving every at-war empire empty and ready for the player to sweep in.

I have a snowball situation right now where an AI has taken 80% of its continent and is snowballing like crazy.

That’s awesome! Did you see if anything unique was happening? We’re they just really teched up or using siege/air?

 

[cain3456]

I always select my opponents, usually with a theme. For me, natural wonders & city state pickers are godsends. I don't want any New World wonders when I'm playing European civs, & I don't want modern city states when I'm playing ancient empires.

 

[Stringer1313]

This time around (after the patch will have reset game files) I’ll put some of my tweaks into the a mod and share that, might take 2-3 weeks. But at least it will give everyone a few key parameters they can play with in one go-to file to make dramatic ages and/or AI conquest better. It’s definitely possible though, and probably the key is to get the AI aggressive enough without inadvertently leaving every at-war empire empty and ready for the player to sweep in.



That’s awesome! Did you see if anything unique was happening? We’re they just really teched up or using siege/air?

Good question - it was all happening outside my view so I'm not sure how they did it! We're definitely not at air stage. I imagine it's just a tech advantage. I will say that I saw an AI successfully bring a battering ram to a city state wall FWIW.

 

[SaboteurINT]

Hi,
When this will be released? This or next thursday ?

 

[Buktu]

Next week.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

My hope is only two.
1: Fix existing bugs
2: DONT INTRODUCE NEW BUGS!

 

[Engeez]

This looks like the best patch they've ever done!
-Stop Asking me button
-AI can take out cities

Now this is gamebreaking news!! Finally AI taking down walled cities. Congrats firaxis you guys are amazing I will shut up now and enjoy the game. So happy!!

 

[Futumch]

Is there some hidden meaning in the top hat and booze? Winston Churchill?

The city-state picker is a great idea, and a very welcome addition.

 

[Disgustipated]

I always found it weird that it required only 10 pop. That wasn't enough to encourage players to invest on growth, since it isn't hard to get 10 pop in every city. 15 requires a bit more investment and some attention to housing/food, so it seems like a good change.

I would have went with size 20 (but with a bigger bonus). Surely I'm not the only weirdo that likes to grow his cities to size 20. I like em' big, what can I say. I cannot play the game of growing to size 10 and stopping.

As for the city state thing, it's kind of interesting, but I probably won't use it. But it's good the option is there for some people. I like the city state mystery game. And usually the AI either kills city states I like, or focuses on the same ones meaning I have to get a max promotion Amani in there or invest more envoys than I'm willing to invest.

I'm not too happy with the thrust promotion nerf. It seems to nullify the debuff (or less of a buff I should say) that melee gets against anti cav units making any change pointless. But we'll see. I actually use the thrust promotion so they can hold their own somewhat against melee units.

 

[Banazir864]

Is there some hidden meaning in the top hat and booze? Winston Churchill?

The consensus seems to be that it’s a reference to an upcoming industry/corporation-based game mode (presumably in January), and data miners have found evidence of such a mode in the game’s code (there’s a separate thread on that). The consensus also seems to be that the January update will have Kublai Khan (possibly as a dual leader of China and Mongolia) and Vietnam (leader unknown), which is again supported by data mining the game’s code—if true, this would preclude Churchill in January. This has not been officially confirmed, though.

 

[AntSou]

has a Wonder-Picker Mod that allows you to select precisely what Wonders you want included AND precisely what Wonders you want excluded.

You can do that with the in-game wonder picker by making sure you select the exact number of wonders for the map size being used. Or am I missing something?

 

[Vargas1]

You can do that with the in-game wonder picker by making sure you select the exact number of wonders for the map size being used. Or am I missing something?

I think what the comment is talking about is a way to definitely include some, definitely exclude some, and let the others be random, as opposed to hand-selecting every one that ends up in the game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think what the comment is talking about is a way to definitely include some, definitely exclude some, and let the others be random, as opposed to hand-selecting every one that ends up in the game.

Yes. I've found that the Mod gives me much more flexibility in what I exclude, include, and how much I leave to 'chance' while making sure Chance doesn't give me relatively worthless Wonders.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Is there some hidden meaning in the top hat and booze? Winston Churchill?

Probably just a holiday thing.