Gameplay comparison

[Rezca]

@Noyyau and Rezca: yes, there's always need of people testing the game. So you're more than welcome. Rezca, I was thinking of adding you to credits as a beta tester as you've done a lot of testing work.

Aww I would be honored


On the subject of testing, I've attached the Turn 360 save. Was a tad late since I was just getting off work when I launched Civ.

Encountered one of my personal pet peeves in this segment as well. Landed a huge army beside one of Dido's cities and she promptly chickened out and vassalized to Siam instead of dying an honorable death. I wouldn't have any of that, so promptly declared on Siam to finish what I started, then payed Egypt to join in on the fun, and on the same turn paid Churchill to go after the Iriquois whom bought China against Churchill on the following turn. Poisoning relations between AI... One of my favorite things to do in CivIV

Churchill unfortunately made peace with Degwanda shortly after, but I did remove Dido from the game and razed one of Siam's cities. I plan on removing a few more before making peace, or perhaps continuing until I start seeing war weariness. See how many cities I can raze before it kicks in

 

[Afforess]

Encountered one of my personal pet peeves in this segment as well. Landed a huge army beside one of Dido's cities and she promptly chickened out and vassalized to Siam instead of dying an honorable death.

Pet peeves? I call that good AI strategy.

Dido was unable to beat you militarily, but she beat you diplomatically, forcing you to bribe a player into being a war ally, and causing you to expand your war unexpectedly. Solid tactics, especially when you are losing massively. While Dido ultimately died, she maximized the harm to you. That is the best you can ask for from an AI. Scorched earth policies.

 

[Rezca]

Pet peeves? I call that good AI strategy.

Dido was unable to beat you militarily, but she beat you diplomatically, forcing you to bribe a player into being a war ally, and causing you to expand your war unexpectedly. Solid tactics, especially when you are losing massively. While Dido ultimately died, she maximized the harm to you. That is the best you can ask for from an AI. Scorched earth policies.

Except thus far the only harm that has come out of it was a few Caravels and a single Frigate sunk, and a few units of mine suicided helping Hammurabi take out one of Siam's stacks. Two cities razed - One of Dido's (Her last city) and one of Siam's, with one more on its way soon.
I haven't lost anything
Well nothing important anyway. I like bringing AI into wars to keep them from peaceful expanding and research, and if it sours global relations in the process even better. That's what happened with Churchill when I bribed him against the Iriquois. Actually, I bribed Egyp first just to keep him from teching in peace, and thought "While I'm at it, let's see what other damage I can do" and saw Churchill was willing to war with Degwanda - though not Siam or at the moment still-alive Dido.

Dido inadvertently brought harm to Siam, and it was pretty cheap to bring Egypt into it. I got him in for a tech everyone else seemed to have and some spare change. Churchill just wanted some money for it. Both of which I was able to make up for after a few turns.

A world at peace is a boring Civ game



It was a good strategy on paper, but it did give me an excuse to declare war on Siam since I was getting a bit annoyed with his pushing settlers up to my border (Well, Babylon's but still).


I should have the Turn 420 save up soon.

*Edit* Finally got Ramses Friendly with me
An event came up (The assassin in capitol one IIRC) and gave me three options:
* +1 relations and +200 with Ramses
* Deduct some cash and receive a Great Spy and -1 Relations with Ramses
* Declare War on Ramses and receive 8 Axemen (Axemen. Seriously?)

Well I poked Ramses to see if he was willing to convert to my religion after picking the first option, and he still didn't like me enough. I saw he was willing to declare war on a few people, so I swung this deal with him:
View attachment 376318

Not only was I chuckling a bit after getting him to declare on three people at once (And making Suleiman furious with me in the process), but it pushed his relations to Friendly and at the same time willing to convert to my religion

 

[Rezca]

Turn 420 save attached. Siam held up for a while, my stack of Light Artillery and Elephants/Cossacks slowly prying cities from his grasp... But once I mass upgraded to Tanks.... Stuff fell apart for him very quickly


After the war I had my units gather together to wait and regroup, and a little bit later Churchill got the "Airliner Crash" event and decided to pick the option to 'claim the wreckage as their own'. Given he was right next door and I had all this military hardware sitting there doing nothing, I decided to take this offense as a declaration of war and sent those idle tanks to his borders

Relations went from Pleased to Furious in just a single turn heh.


Meanwhile I got Ramses to re-declare on the eastern civs a second time, and Gilgamesh is furious with the Egyptian leader, having -8 from repeated "You declared war on our friend!" hits alone

Theodora hasn't really drawn any attention to herself with her little island there, and is several generations behind everyone else. Mansa Musa somehow managed to procure two additional cities off-continent, and is similarly backwards in tech. Hasn't really been asking for many freebies either, surprisingly.

 

[Afforess]

Well nothing important anyway. I like bringing AI into wars to keep them from peaceful expanding and research, and if it sours global relations in the process even better.

Rev726 includes changes to intentionally break this play style and make the AI aware they are being "had".

Revision 726

• Turn on old BTS path finding
• Add new diplomacy trade option: Cease Relations With (Player)
• Add new diplomacy trade option: Pay War Reparations
• Fixed Embassy diplomacy trade option to only use 1 line instead of 2 on trade screen
• Track war mongering by players, have it influence attitude
• Minor diplomacy AI improvements & bug fixes

I am very eager for you to grab the latest revision and try a fresh game out. See how well your normal play style works. Let me know if the AI reacts better to it.

 

[Rezca]

Rev726 includes changes to intentionally break this play style and make the AI aware they are being "had".

How exactly will the "Track war mongering by players, have it influence attitude" work though? I'm going to assume that if you buy someone into a war with an AI you're not at war with and have never been at war with, that will raise a red flag for them, and if you do it again they'll start to get suspicious? But if you buy them into a war with an AI that has declared on you in the past or is at war with you currently, they won't see it as malicious intent towards [the AI you're bribing]?

Similarly, how will this affect relations between Player and AI when it comes to hiring warmonger AIs like Genghis, Alexander, and the absolutely insane Montezuma who all are very easy to bribe into a war?

If you bribe someone into a war and never join in, that will start to sour relations with you and them, but if you join in or hired them against an enemy of theirs / someone you're at war with, they'll let it pass?


Add new diplomacy trade option: Cease Relations With (Player)
Add new diplomacy trade option: Pay War Reparations

How do these work? The latter is a way to reduce "You declared war on us" penalties?

I am very eager for you to grab the latest revision and try a fresh game out. See how well your normal play style works. Let me know if the AI reacts better to it.

Looking forward to it! We'll see if Shaka will be the first to go down again or not while I'm at it
Seriously, with how he stated on that peninsula like that, conflict was inevitable. In each of my games he's always the one who ends up founding Hellenism, how about that?

*Edit* Normal playstyle huh? So play like I'm unaware of the new AI changes?

 

[Rezca]

Can't get the original savefile to load after the update =/

I can start a new game and play that just fine, but tryign to load the original Comparison savefile it will immediately jump to about 10% (Right under the 'galaxy' picture) and just sit there unmoving. I let it sit for twenty minutes and it never budged

I deleted my cache, the ini files, everything normal before updating. Starting a Play Now game and doing a dozen turns then trying to load resulted in the same problem. Strange...

 

[Afforess]

Can't get the original savefile to load after the update =/

I can start a new game and play that just fine, but tryign to load the original Comparison savefile it will immediately jump to about 10% (Right under the 'galaxy' picture) and just sit there unmoving. I let it sit for twenty minutes and it never budged

I deleted my cache, the ini files, everything normal before updating. Starting a Play Now game and doing a dozen turns then trying to load resulted in the same problem. Strange...

Can you upload one of the saves you can't open? I playtested my changes for > 5 hours and loaded saves multiple times, but there is always the possibility I missed something.

 

[Afforess]

How exactly will the "Track war mongering by players, have it influence attitude" work though? I'm going to assume that if you buy someone into a war with an AI you're not at war with and have never been at war with, that will raise a red flag for them, and if you do it again they'll start to get suspicious? But if you buy them into a war with an AI that has declared on you in the past or is at war with you currently, they won't see it as malicious intent towards [the AI you're bribing]?

Basically actions that incite proxy wars (wars you are not a member of) will raise your warmonger score. This score slowly decreases over time. If you raise it high enough, you will start to take an attitude hit with other players and also be targeted more aggressively.

Similarly, how will this affect relations between Player and AI when it comes to hiring warmonger AIs like Genghis, Alexander, and the absolutely insane Montezuma who all are very easy to bribe into a war?

Bribing war allies to join your own war is not really an issue, and my changes don't affect it.

If you bribe someone into a war and never join in, that will start to sour relations with you and them, but if you join in or hired them against an enemy of theirs / someone you're at war with, they'll let it pass?

Exactly.

How do these work? The latter is a way to reduce "You declared war on us" penalties?

Paying war reparations removed the "you declared war/you hired war allies/you razed cities/you nuked us" penalties (it does not remove penalties for harming friends of theirs.) It is very expensive, and meant only as a means to placate an AI you wish to repair relations with.

 

[Rezca]

Can you upload one of the saves you can't open? I playtested my changes for > 5 hours and loaded saves multiple times, but there is always the possibility I missed something.

It's the one 45* attached at the original post. That's the one I can't load after updating

It will start to load and then just halt - won't progress at all. I can start a new game, save that and then load that file, but I can't load the comparison 6000BC save. It will try to load, no errors or anything, but it won't finish loading.

 

[Afforess]

It's the one 45* attached at the original post. That's the one I can't load after updating

It will start to load and then just halt - won't progress at all. I can start a new game, save that and then load that file, but I can't load the comparison 6000BC save. It will try to load, no errors or anything, but it won't finish loading.

Oh okay. I misunderstood, I thought saving and reloading didn't work with any new game. I will try and fix save compatibility.

 

[Afforess]

...And fixed in Rev727! Was a tiny fix.

 

[Rezca]

...And fixed in Rev727! Was a tiny fix.

Got it and it's working now with the update

Save T63 attached, won't be able to play more until this evening though. So far nothing out of the ordinary has happened, and my tech path was just a tad different than last time. City layout will probably be similar to usual (That city by the Cow and Wheat has turned out to be a nice spot so far!)

 

[Rezca]

Turns 120 and 180 attached.

Hammurabi got Confucianism this game and it spread to Genghis (Who spawned two rebel civs already!) and Shaka - as with the previous games - got Helenism. I ended up going religionless until everyone else went Confucian. I missed out on Naghualism this game.

I don't know what the AI is up to here. I'm at 12 cities and haven't had so much as a single revolt yet, Hammurabi has 4 cities, and I've already razed one of Shaka's cities
Surprisingly he didn't have his Iron connected yet, or if he did the only units he was using to guard his border cities were Javelins and archers.

 

[Rezca]

Thread seems to have been buried a bit

Was going to wait until I had reached turn 300 but...



A'right so this game has been a bit unusual. Shaka still was the target of my aggression and was the first AI to disappear, Genghis was literally torn apart and shattered by constant rebellions, spawning the Greeks, the Aztecs, the Spanish... A little later the first two vassalized to me, and the Greeks gave up their independance to me. One thing that frustrated me was he had two great commanders, a dozen longbows, and two settlers in his city... But I couldn't select any of them individually - just the Settler. If I tried to select any one of them in any way, it'd group-select all of them at once. If I tried to split the group, it'd auto-select the Settler, but again clicking anything else would select all of the other units. Eventually I gave up and disbanded them all and razed the city. Genghis didn't seem to care heh.


Moments after Shaka exited the game his second city demanded independance so they could worship Hellenism. I granted their request then promptly declared war on him and re-captured the city. Somehow, the stability in it went from Critical and worsening to Safe and improving after that


Something odd I felt I should point out is the AI expansion. Even the AIs not suffering from war or rebellions were.... Slow to expand, to say the least. The Siamese never did settle the land that in every prior game had belonged to them unchallenged, which I'm settling now, and they've got like a dozen longbows in their city and a settler which has been sitting there for ages. Most AIs have only 4 ~ 6 cities while I'm pushing up to 20

I've got a doctor's appointment now so I won't be able to post the next save until this evening.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Something odd I felt I should point out is the AI expansion. Even the AIs not suffering from war or rebellions were.... Slow to expand, to say the least.

I've got the same feeling in my current game. Are we sure this hasn't anything to do with the old pathing system? I feel more and more this is causing more troubles than solving issues.

 

[Afforess]

I've got the same feeling in my current game. Are we sure this hasn't anything to do with the old pathing system? I feel more and more this is causing more troubles than solving issues.

You are free to test. Turn the option off, run a game, turn it back on, run a game.

Otherwise it could be anything. Even something as benign as poor RNG rolls.

 

[Rezca]

I've got the same feeling in my current game. Are we sure this hasn't anything to do with the old pathing system? I feel more and more this is causing more troubles than solving issues.

Not sure... I've noticed a lot of bizarre movement problems, like a Navigation 1 Galley will take two movement points and the third will regard all aquatic moves as 'illegal' until I deselect and reselect the unit, A galley with cargo will attempt to move across land when using Go To, and I've had a lot of times in my war with Shaka where units will regard all possible moves as illegal even when nowhere near his city (They'll still move to the location though after clicking)

If it's affecting the AI as well then that might explain their painfully slow expansion. Here I was thinking I was actually doing legitimately well too

 

[Rezca]

You are free to test. Turn the option off, run a game, turn it back on, run a game.

Otherwise it could be anything. Even something as benign as poor RNG rolls.

I thought to pass it off as RNG for the early game myself as well, but we're pushing into the Pre-Industrial now and all of the AI are suffering from it. Not just one or two, but all of them. I can't feel this is coincidence, but it may very well be. Who knows

 

[Afforess]

I thought to pass it off as RNG for the early game myself as well, but we're pushing into the Pre-Industrial now and all of the AI are suffering from it. Not just one or two, but all of them. I can't feel this is coincidence, but it may very well be. Who knows

So followup? I turned the old pathing back on, do you notice a difference? Has any AI's ceased contact with you yet?