[GEM 1.13.4 and CIVUP2.5.2] Weird technology progress and weird religion stuff?

[Shadzy19]

Hi,


I just recently started playing again after a break of half a year or so.

Did a fresh install and installed the latest stable versions 1.13.4 and 2.5.2
Also installed the latest versions of infoaddict (v19) and City state diplomacy (v 35)

Fired up a emperor / epic / continents / standard map game and have been playing for nearly 400 turns.

The first problem im having is that everyone stays on par on technology even though im making 10x the science of Japan and triple the science of Aztecs and nearly the double of Ottomans, im about at par with Iroq.

The second problem is that I killed germany early in the game and captured their holy city, I cant however convert to the religion they had.
I can spread their religion, buy cathedrals and im getting the bonus from their religion (see the faith on hills)

I forgot to activate CSD though in the options files of GEM and CIVUP but I doubt this is causing the problem?

Im guessing these are bugs or have i been gone to long and have these things been implanted with the patches?


Save and some pics are attached.


Greetings,

Jeff.

 

[Shadzy19]

I tried a second game, same settings but i activated CSD this time before the new game.

The religion bug seems gone (took a enemy holy site but everything seems to function properly this time) so this could have been a bug because I forgot to activate CSD.

The technology pace however is again the same thing, i even started thinking infoaddict was wrong in its stats but the "civ has advanced to .. era" and the units they are using seem to comfirm all civ are at tech par despite the science income.
Demographics confirms this as well (best - worst 2% diffrence)

Can anyone please confirm this isnt happening in their games and this isnt intended to make the game harder?

Added pics and save from second game.

 

[Dunkah]

I can confirm the same thing. Just recently updated to the new Beta version. No matter how much I concentrated on Science I could never get a lead. Everyone was within 1 tech of each other. Even the Civ that had lost all but one secondary city.

Also the Religion Bug was not bothering me however I was playing as the Celts.

 

[klngarthur]

To start with, I don't think Info Addict accounts for the AI handicaps in GEM. On prince and above the AI receives a permanent bonus to its research for each new era the human player enters. At prince this is 4% per era and it scales up to 20% per era on deity, so if it's not being accounted for by the industrial era, it's gonna be quite significant. You could test this by modifying your GEAI_Handicaps.xml to give the AI a huge negative or positive bonus and see if it's reflected in Info Addict.

On top of that, CiV already includes a modifier that makes techs cheaper once other players that player knows have researched them. For example, assuming all players are known to each other in a 10 player game, the first to research a tech pays full price, and then the cost scales down linearly for each player until the last player to research it, who will pay ~79% of the total cost. GEM greatly increases this modifier, the final player pays only ~48% of the total cost. Effectively, this makes it much more difficult for any player to pull ahead since their opponents need less science to stay on pace. Additionally, since the AI generally prefers a breadth first approach to tech and scouts aggressively, most of the time they won't be researching a tech that hasn't already been researched by someone else first.

Research agreements also serve to level the playing field, since they are based off the total science of the two participants, the lesser of the two parties will receive a larger relative benefit (especially when you consider the techs they'd be researching likely cost less and have a discount as well).

Beyond these changes, there's not anything, afaik, keeping the AI at your tech level artificially. To test this you can, again, give the AI a severe penalty in GEAI_Handicaps.xml, you should rapidly accelerate ahead of them in tech.

Personally I feel like the GEM change to the research cost discount is completely overboard, so I've modified mine back to the vanilla value. I understand Thal's goal is to make a more competitive game, but i think it's a flawed approach. Firstly, not everyone wants to play a game where ever player is competitive. Secondly, this approach is highly dependent on map type to work: on a map where players don't reach each other until late (any map with lots of water or mountains), the bonus is nullified or greatly diminished. Finally, and most importantly, it really reduces the value of having high science. If everyone is close in science (as the change makes it), then there's really no reason to pay full price when you could just wait a few turns and pay literally half as much, then save all that money and time on science buildings. In case you're wondering, the field is TECH_COST_TOTAL_KNOWN_TEAM_MODIFIER, and it's set in GER_Data.xml. The vanilla value is 30, the GEM value is 120.

 

[Shadzy19]

I understand what your saying, the numbers dont mean everything and offcourse there are a lot of things that make the techs cheaper so the gaph doesnt get to big and civs dont run to far away and thats great but I can safely confirm the thing im experiencing is definatly a bug in the latest stable CIVUP / GEM version, maybe not everyone gets the bug but I definatly do.

I tried 4 games for 250-400 turns on emperor with the latest stable CIVUP and GEM and in all 4 games All the civs never got more then 2 techs diffrence despite what the science incomes / city's / whatever was.
For me this breaks the enjoyment of the game.

Playing the latest beta's now from both CIVUP and GEM and tried 2 games on immortal for the same amount of turns, in both games the gaphs in techs where big (15 techs or so from highest vs lowest, practicly none of them have the same number of techs. Proof enough for me.