Deity snowballers discussion
- Thread starter Jednooki_John
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vyyt
Deity
Why is it unfortunate? Are you talking about empires overexpanding and then falling apart? I think it would not be fun at all. Isn't being conquered militarily or getting problems with unhappiness and rebellions when you start falling behind in other areas enough?
Yeah, it may be unfun. I would see it as a mod mod with events that do that. Similar to endgame crisis in Stellaris.
America has the tools to be very powerful in the early game because of the title buying and still scale into the late game with vision, tile buying, and its unique building.
Culture still feels like the biggest challenge towards building wonders, so I went prophecy for enhancer and managed to reform after I snagged Cathedral of St Basil with a great engineer.
My goal with statecraft is to try to maintain 3 CS as allies to also reduce my wonder requirement by another culture policy. I almost got Leaning Tower but missed it by 4 turns.
I think the USA is a top choice for a 100% peaceful game. If you let yourself play like a 95% peaceful game a lot of different civs could work, but it's the inability to respond to being forward settled through violence. It makes certain things a lot more important, and I think the USA is pretty uniquely positioned to handle that specific challenge.
My second choices would be India or Arabia
My second choices would be India or Arabia
Cokolwiek
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It would be a good change but only if we provide a check to exploiting it as it surely need to be on the opener, which may be chosen by anyone who is otherwise going progress, and also because tradition already possesses the fastest city settling potential of any policies as was mentioned in many threads recently.
I suggest a simple flat increase of 3/4 percentage points to increased technology and policies costs, for a total of +10/11% per city, so it would tradition to stay tall and benefit doing so.
On other things I share @Jednooki_John feelings and I have some suggestions to decrease direct tediousness of the war, while increasing difficulty at the same time, shortly. The most obvious would be to half possible anti-warmonger fervor, as it is unfun and unrealistic. If you are warmonger with established military tradition and experienced troops it does not makes any sense for some newly raised troops to be as battle-hardened as your veterans. So it would cap at 32.5 % or some similar value.
In the place of this we have quite a lot of sensible mechanism already posted by @Rhys DeAnno and @looorg: increased yield penalties for captured cities (through courthouse, but like I said, I wish we would redevelop courthouses into peaceful all-cities buidlings), eliminating hill on kill, large bonuses to trade routes when at peace, instant severing of trade deals (thus cutting off many luxuries) when razing/capturing too much cities which would hopefully translate to massive happiness problems, while also help with bringing down AI who swallowed half of the world. War would be much more enjoyable without artificial penalties, while empire managing much harder and more realistic to compensate.
I am also in favor of experience reduction to ranged units a bit. I don't agree with @ElliotS that it would be unfun. We had this problem in Civ5 since vanilla, with ranged units being much more exploitable than melee ones in the hands of human players. That would cut the Lernaean Hydra once and for all.
I completely don't agree with something people mentioned here e.g. if war is too easy, disable vassalage. It would only add to tediousness of the game, not meaningful threats or any challenge to the player. Vassalage is in good place, the loyalty of your vassals just need to be questioned a lot more, that's all.
Really, though, 100% peace shouldn't be something we should be balancing for (not that that's what your saying, just wanted to point it out). 100% peace is more like an artificial restriction one imposes on themself for an interesting challenge. It's something I purposely do when playing India as like a roleplaying thing, or maybe as Korea and pretending to be a hermit nation. I really don't think making that mode of play balanced should be a goal- it's just ignoring an important aspect of the game.
A 'peaceful' playthrough should be viable but I think that should just mean that one doesn't use war as your main mechanic to be competitive. I think a game could still be considered 'peaceful' even if you have to take a few cities here and there for strategic reasons. Access to important strategics, slowing down an AI that's going to runaway in the late game, conquering a CS or two to hurt diplo civs, etc. Late game, DoWing a civ getting close to a culture victory to buy yourself time to win via science or diplo. Even just joining a joint war and taking a city because you can easily do so in the situation.
As long as you're mainly staying competitive without having to conquer a continent and vassalize half the world then I think that should count as relatively 'peaceful' for balance purposes.
Well it’s a nice sentiment, nothing mentioned here comes close To the massive benefit Of an extra 25% Or more CS that you would gain if you cut anti war mongers penalties In half
Cokolwiek
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I agree. Also, we are trying the game to be more accessible for both war and peace, but not dominated by war 90% of the time as it tends to be now.
That's why some of what I support and was proposed like reducing ranged units experience gains hurts and balances both peace and war. And that's also why some of it is directly aiming at making war both more enjoyable (halved anti-warmonger penalty, maybe even heal on kill should stay?) because currently its too boring and tiring, and harder to govern and plan (yield penalties, harsher happiness and diplomatic penalties, taking away free settler and some of early production) because currently it's just too easy in that aspect.
I think they are just following my example and for me it was just the random civ of the game I started to see if I could do all peace, or minimal war or whatever we should call it. This time i razed two Otto foward-settles, they tried sailing around to my rear and encircle me?! That just had to go really.
I have not really finished my re-do of the America game. But I did start and I can get a fair amount of wonders without any issues really. I went tradition - beauty - and then just went to town really. Part of the improvement tho is that I know more about the map and the resources so I could do minor tweaks and get slightly better results this time around. I was the third religion -- celts first, then siam, then me, then egypt and last poly.
The rest of the game sort of went like before. Celts rofflestomping the world one civ at a time. An odd thing that happened was that civs just volunteered to become Vassals of the Celts even tho not at war or losing any wars with them. Japan (only war-vassal so far), Ottoman (why?), Venice (not even on the same continent?!). Not sure what happened there really. I think in the end it will just be Celtic world and me and then I doubt I can hold out from the all out attack.
But I managed a fair amount of wonder-spam, the only reason Celts are catching up is that they do what the warmonger-player does -- let someone else build them and then conquer them. I Built 4/6 ancient wonders (stone, temple, mausoleum and petra -- sneaky tweak wonder, i noted in the last game that nobody ever built it so I moved a settle spot one tile to fix that). The Classical era was a bit of a let down as I only managed Terracota and Angkor Wat. The AI caught up here and bonus produced some wonders with their era changes etc. They where very spread out so among all civs, most got one. Only got St. Basils in the Medieval era, once again lots of civ building one each. Renaissance I managed to pull Tower of Pisa, Pocelain, Uffizi and Sistine. In Industrial I got Neuschwanstein, Slattermill and the Eiffel thanks for stored engineers just instabuilding them. I'm confident I can get most of the rest of the normal wonders in the game until Celts manage to line one up with a production boost or something. They'll get their ideology and policy wonders but I think I can more or less sweep the rest, if I survive the eventual armageddon.
I believe I'm on point for tech-parity with the celts around Industrial-Modern, they'll spike a bit every era change or so but I think I'll by then be able to science bomb them with great people. To gain parity and then overtake them.
That said even with that I'm behind Celts on Culture/Policy, just less of a gap then before. So far I have not had to wait for culture, but it's getting close. Celts are still 2-3 policies ahead of me and everyone else.
I don't think I'll finish the game but I think I can draw some conclusions. Is peace possible? Sure, but the stars have to align and if you don't stop the snowballer then nobody will and that will be the end of it since as soon as that thing get rollin' it's just going to eat one AI at the time.
Frankly, the reason you can't succeed at Deity peacefully is because you aren't very good at playing peacefully, as shown by various posts within this thread.
If you think tradition is good for spamming cities, then I'm not surprised you can't win with it on Deity. Yes, you could can build like 3 settlers in a row. It's a great way to completely destroy your culture and science. This change to settlers has been really crippling to tradition because the population loss hurts them far more than any other tree. This myth around the forum that tradition somehow benefits is false, early game culture is very important, taking tradition and leaving your capital at only 3 or 4 population means you get 1 or 2 culture from social policies. You are going to shoot up your social policy cost, while having terrible culture output. You don't have the population to even use your specialists (you need to use that artist slot). You are making bad decisions and arguing that things need to be made easier until you can win without having to reconsider those decisions.
Taking 1 tradition just to settle faster and then taking progress isn't a good strategy either. That proposal to increase teh cost per city would nerf tradition into complete uselessness outside of playing with just one city. You want to delay every single social policy for the rest of the game to save 43 food per settler? It's not worth a social policy, it's not worth the delay to progress's key policies like the 3 science, the 10 culture per building, finishing the tree, or starting your second tree. Progress can just bounce cities between 3 and 4 population to spam settlers.
I also tried America for a totally peaceful game a while back:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/3-1-deity-peaceful-photojournal.655819/
This run ended just because ironclads were extremely OP and lost my coastal cities. After that I just couldn't hold onto inland cities either. Had I been able to hold all 5 cities, I may have been able to win via tourism.
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My test for whether deity is in the right place, since deity is supposed to be the most extreme challenge, is whether a mostly peaceful playthrough is possible under optimal circumstances. It seems that America can get early game wonders. I still haven't managed it with anyone else, but came close with India. Arabia probably can come close too.
It seems like some of the key pacing elements for deity should include the average turn that certain wonders are gone to the AI by. Tradition with and without Hanging Gardens is night and day. I think the C bonuses right now are in a really strong place and could allow for the slowing down of some of the early bonuses so that civs outside of America, India, and Arabia have a shot.
I think the devs are generally open to tweaking A/B/C. They've often encouraged people to tweak the values themselves and then report back on what values feel appropriate.
It's also possible that a tweak to their initial city production bonus will help address their early power and make an adjustment to A unnecessary.
Cokolwiek
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Lol, I guess for some of you continuing ad personam accusation against me is just just far more interesting than debating the points I and other posters made. Have you ever read what I wrote? I specifically brought up example of progress or authority taking no food penalty tradition opener ("which may be chosen by anyone who is otherwise going progress") so your whole second paragraph is just rant resulting from not reading my post. I made absolutely zero references about how I play tradition, though I hinted that the goal of tradition is to stay tall. Because you don't like to read my posts its here: "so it would [force] tradition to stay tall and benefit [for] doing so"
I was specifically referencing other posters play styles, not mine: "as was mentioned in many threads recently". Here are those threads:
One Two
And here is entire topic spurred by those discussions comparing early settling potential of tradition and progress. Guess who was the clean winner? Tradition. And in your posts there, you called that thread "great". Now you are attacking me when I am referencing results from that thread. It is clear that you are doing it only because it is now me who states that, even if you agree with the point when it is not me bringing it.
And in any of these threads the majority admitted that tradition is much better at settling early, which does not have to entail going full tradition or tall at all. The fact that I suggested increased policy cost for new cities for tradition, may have hinted you that I don't spam settlers but try to stay tall. Furthermore I try to use tradition opener to finish pyramids nowadays, not spam settler, as they give you an early free settler without loosing pop, which also gives you faster second city to train settlers from and sparing your capital pop and time to build wonders. But it would require you to simple ask me how I play, or read my post carefully. But you wanted to prove I make wrong decisions so you taken what you liked from my post and attacked me. Furthermore these are my words from one of the threads I linked: "especially wide tradition (what? it is like cutting the wings on which it flies)" also "Tradition in order to capitalize on its only strengths should go tall and focus on specialists and great people, stay in range of three to six cities, not try to go wide. It doesn't have any instruments to succeed at it. The answer to the topic should be stay tall and eventually capture and puppet any cities that will be settled.".
It's getting a little boring when I have to respond to poor ad personams and the actual propositions are heard only by some of the posters, for which I am thankful.
Also, I give you a medal from taking one sentence from my posts and attacking me with it and ignoring the rest, filled with propositions. As far as I know many excellent deity players struggle to beat peaceful deity, and I am not talking about myself.
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How about this thread? In your own words "By no means I am saying that I have played good." When I lose on Deity, I try to get to better. You lose and you demand balance changes, never mind if you made bad decisions. It's the highest difficulty, its supposed to be hard.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/austria-deity-3-1.655818/
Where you picked a bad civ for the situation, picked a bad pantheon, and put your capital's settler in a bad spot? It's not evidence that Deity is too hard to be peaceful on. It is that evidence that you just don't play that well.
You and several others have put forward this idea that somehow the settler change (that they now require food) favors tradition, because you can spam settlers.
It just doesn't, that view is really shortsighted. Sure, you have the option to speed out a bunch of settlers, and that's usually a terrible idea when you look at the first 100 turns in a broad sense. I encourage anyone reading this who currently takes tradition to spam settlers to stop doing that in their next game, and watch themselves how much faster your culture and science is.
The main issue is you might get forward settled, and that's what war is for. Taking authority doesn't unlock the "declare war" button, it's there for everyone, use it when the situation is appropriate.
I called it great because Stalker put a lot of work into it. I don't agree with everything he said, in fact I pointed out several flaws in his approach. But even then, Stalker makes 8 points from his experience, only two of which favor tradition. In his evidence, progress was in a much better position after turn 100, in addition to getting it's religion earlier.
Yes, you can settle faster with tradition, but you shouldn't. It hurts culture and science a lot. Even if I could immediately build 5 settlers as progress, I wouldn't. It's smarter to wait a bit for social policies, or until you have workers available.
(this is from memory): the 2nd citizen needs 15 food, and the 4th citizen costs 43 food. So 43 is what I usually I "pay" for a settler as progress (or authority), in addition to the production. I don't know the cost of citizens 5 and 6 by memory, but they are both a lot higher than 43, and that remains a big loss for tradition.
I feel like this thread has already found several good ideas:
- First and foremost, there is a difference between being "peaceful" and "totally peaceful". Tradition and progress are allowed to declare war and take cities.
- To make war less appealing, hurt the spoils of war. I think the best targets are imperium's yields and courthouses (these also won't significantly hurt an authority AI who fails in early wars).
- I think progress is overall fine, but it could get a small buff (or authority a small nerf).
- Personally, I can only make tradition work on specific starts, I need really specific tiles available (a 3 food tile, and several strong production tiles is best), or I need to turn on ancient ruins and get a bit lucky. It needs the most help, and it's also the social policy most appealing to playing peacefully and defensively all game.
I don't really agree with scaling the tech/culture city modifier for Tradition to be extra just because Social Policies don't give disadvantages as of now, and I think its inelegant. Maybe if Tradition needs an easier time popping out/recovering from settlers, whenever you think those Settlers should come, what it actually needs is just more free food in the capital.
Also, people have commented the ranged XP nerf is unfun. Would just *eliminating* the Range promotion sit better with people? That seems to me to be a huge source of fake easiness, similar to warmonger penalty being a huge source of fake difficulty.
Also, people have commented the ranged XP nerf is unfun. Would just *eliminating* the Range promotion sit better with people? That seems to me to be a huge source of fake easiness, similar to warmonger penalty being a huge source of fake difficulty.
Cokolwiek
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Lol. You are taking several months old thread, which I specifically made for a photojournal. I also did things like recapturing my city and reducing it population to five or so. That's was mostly due to have an interesting photojournal. I don't argue that I am great tradition player and that I shouldn't lose on deity. I am arguing game is rigged against tradition from the start far more than against authority. But you are back for questioning my skill and ad personam remarks. Even if I don't play that well, I am not discussing it, you ignore most others posters experiences and seem to be quite content that most of people cannot have enjoyable deity game. Fine, but I am on another side of this divide.
By the way it's obvious I've played more than a dozen tradition game since that time, and I read many posts and photojournals of better players, including you, or watched playthroughs like @Milae, which affected my skill and reevaluated many things in my eyes. What's next? Reminding me that I played emperor at the beginning and not deity from the start, so shouldn't be posting in this thread?
Because: 1. it is expolitable to humans by taking tradition opener and selecting other policies (even if it is suboptimal - this changes would affect all players at al difficulties, not only deity player like you who knows what absolutely optimal and slightly less optimal) 2. it gives a lot of potential snowball power to AI, which already has much larger capitals than you, so it would exacerbate tradition AI potential.
And right now situation tends to be appropriate 90% of the time. Taking this to 66% would be a great improvement. Right some posters here are evaluating if only two (out of thirthy plus!) civilization have a good shot at deity tradition win. It's not good balance.
Attacking your ideas or strategies explicitly isn't ad hominem? I'm not attacking you, I'm disagreeing with ideas you've posted. I do read other people's comments, and I give them a lot of value.
I don't see how it's obvious you improved. You certainly haven't gotten any less stubborn, and it's your ideas that make me think you don't get it. See below:
I want to be clear about your opinion here. You think that potentially getting to build settlers without a food loss is so strong that you would take a social policy that increases the cost of all future social policies and techs by as much as 12% (if you had 4 non-capital cities) to do it?
You aren't looking long term. Feel free to do analysis like what Stalker did with tradition vs progress, but comparing progress vs tradition + progress. I've done it, and pure progress is just far superior. This isn't suboptimal vs optimal, this is a very, very, very bad social policy against two good social policy trees.
Do you consider a game where I get forward settled and war that guy, take 1 city, and only fight defensively the rest of the game a game that I was a warmonger?
I don't and several other posters don't either. Even the AI doesn't. You are allowed to declare war, that doesn't mean war was your whole strategy. That's just a fundamental disagreement about what peaceful means.
Nothing you've suggested would even fix this either. The issue of being forward settled isn't something we can realistically fix. None of nerfing authority, buffing tradition, or changing social policy costs would address it at all.
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I feel like people aren't exactly content but they are realistic. Some civs are a lot better than others (for deity at least) so it is pretty much impossible for every civ to be viable in deity on every start and on every map. Otherwise there will be loads of starts/maps/civs which are in fact rather easy. Deity is the hardest level it shouldn't be for everyone, and on the highest level plenty of strats won't be viable, maybe total peace is just one of them. War gets you out of bad starts a lot better, it is just how civ works and would require a radical re-design.
I'll say it again- questioning whether someone actually understands how to execute a certain playstyle is totally valid when that person is suggesting balance changes.
It is absolutely possible that a person can mistake their own skill shortcomings as evidence that a portion of the game is imbalanced and exploring that possibility is not a "personal attack". In fact- this exact scenario happens frequently. People routinely complain about the AI universally hating them and more often than not the problem is their lack of understanding of diplomacy (and only occasionally is there something truly broken in the AI).
Making sure there really is a problem rather than people not playing that part of the game well is an important thing to figure out before making balance changes.
It is absolutely possible that a person can mistake their own skill shortcomings as evidence that a portion of the game is imbalanced and exploring that possibility is not a "personal attack". In fact- this exact scenario happens frequently. People routinely complain about the AI universally hating them and more often than not the problem is their lack of understanding of diplomacy (and only occasionally is there something truly broken in the AI).
Making sure there really is a problem rather than people not playing that part of the game well is an important thing to figure out before making balance changes.