More Q&A with Kate

[kingchris20]

The random events don't sound very promising. I may be mistaken, but it seems that the answer was twisted to make city state quests, espionage decisions, and such into random events, not that there's an actual random event mechanic in the game.

I suppose the mod possibility is good, though aren't there already some mods like that?

I have to wonder what that "random" event system will be in the civil war scenario.....hmmm could be interesting for the modding capabilities

 

[kingchris20]

Hopefully they'll be loering the AI's hapiness levels in the patch after the xpac...

Yeah the AI benefits from happiness are insane! I have only just recently managed to be the "top" happiness producer in a game, but most of the time I'm towards the bottom of the list, but rarely unhappy

 

[Shadow717]

Hey Kate thanks for the Q&A! If the Q&A is live and still on going I certainly have a question that I've been dying to have answered: Currently, not all the map scripts that are available for use in single player are available in multiplayer (ex: Sandstorm, terra, Donut, and many more). Will the BnW expansion fix this so that all map types are an option in MP? Especially the terra map! That map seems like a perfect choice for multiplayer, so sad that you can't choose it.


---

Or perhaps I'm doing something wrong and all the maps are playable, without modding, in MP..in which case ignore my question and someone tell me what I have to do to get it to work! Although i'm almost positive most maps are missing from MP.

 

[kaspergm]

I have two questions:

1. With city flipping happening once happiness gets below -20 , has AI happiness bonuses on higher levels been tweaked so that they are not always in > +50 no matter how poorly they play?
   
2. With Diplomats affecting other parts of the game, like World Congress delegate trading, how will this work if one plays with Espionage turned off? Will we still be able to get Diplomats (please say yes), or has this issue been covered in some other way?

 

[werothegreat]

-20 happiness? Seems like a mechanic that may not work at the start. IMO probably could become completely useless in singleplayer as most people have little trouble with happy and on higher levels (emperor, immortal, deity), the AI would never even get close to -20 unhappy even with high tourism effects.

Only place I could see this actually happening would be in multiplayer

I'm pretty sure this will refer to the specific unhappiness created by your Ideology, and not that civ's overall Happiness.

 

[I_qua_I]

Hopefully they'll be loering the AI's hapiness levels in the patch after the xpac...

This is exactly what I was thinking. Currently, the AIs happiness is ridiculous. I honestly don't even know why they included the 'happiest civs ranking' as it conveys no useful information whatsoever (as opposed to the military and science ones). It's not even entertaining like the 'most wonderful' one either since you're never going to really be able to compete in the happiness category.

Pillaging their luxuries? Doesn't matter. Stealing a (mercantile) city-state? Who cares?

In order for this not to be such a disastrous failure they would have to lower the happiness, or at least lower the UI display of happiness and have the AIs happiness work differently behind the scenes.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The Cultural Victory screen shows "unhappiness due to ideological pressure" as well as your overall happiness level. So I'd say that cities start flipping when the "unhappiness due to ideological pressure" drops to -20 not when your total happiness drops to -20.

 

[kajillion]

Unless there's a total overhaul of how AIs handle unhappiness you will never see one of their cities flip. I rarely see the AI with happiness below 20, let alone -20.

 

[Liufeng]

Am I the only one who thinks there was really nothing special or a little bit exciting in this Q&A session ... ?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Am I the only one who thinks there was really nothing special or a little bit exciting in this Q&A session ... ?

Nope, not many new info which is disappoiting, the only new thing is details regarding city flipping, other than that we knew everything else.

But this means new info is on the horizon, last time she released Q&A's we recieved the Trade Route Featurette. In fact, anytime Kate posts something Civ related it always end up being a prelude to information coming out.

 

[Cicero63]

How long ago did we find out about Morocco and Indonesia? It seems that it goes in this cycle: featurette, then Q&A response, then new civ announced. Perhaps we may hear something Friday!

 

[Buccaneer]

We can't allow the AI to change their happiness bonuses at higher levels because that allows to grow, expand and conquer better. In other words, provide some sort of competition against human players. The solution is to change the faulty mechanics to take into account their scalable bonuses.

 

[Gali]

They're almost surely saving the last civ reveals for the June Gamer magazines. I was actually quite satisfied with this QA. It was a succinct discussion of a debated game mechanic. We have had enough random civ hints. Whenever the magazines hit we will know the last 2 at least.

Unless we see a post begging for facebook likes tomorrow, I feel that is it for this week. The E3 cycle is gaining steam and a niche game like CiV will just be lost. My main question at this point is with 2k Greg gone will they still have the pre-release livestream.

 

[Glassmage]

lol there will be lots of rage from people if Kate plays :/

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I'd love if Ed or Dennis would actually PLAY the game.

 

[Louis XXIV]

The random events don't sound very promising. I may be mistaken, but it seems that the answer was twisted to make city state quests, espionage decisions, and such into random events, not that there's an actual random event mechanic in the game.

I wouldn't say it was twisted into saying that. Rather, it's pretty clear that there are no random events except for city state quests (espionage is a random chance on a predictable effect, like the RNG for combat). I don't think they were trying to hide that fact. Many people don't like random events (I certainly don't), but they are possible to mod if you would like.

 

[kaspergm]

We can't allow the AI to change their happiness bonuses at higher levels because that allows to grow, expand and conquer better. In other words, provide some sort of competition against human players. The solution is to change the faulty mechanics to take into account their scalable bonuses.

I'm not quite sure that's entirely true - I mean, when AI sits around with +80 on a regular basis, there does seem to be quite a lot of room to give away before they hit rock bottom, and even if they should get in trouble, perhaps there will be somewhere hidden a code that they should actually build happiness buildings?

 

[HemlockMartinis]

We've asked about other revamped civs since these Q&As began. By now I feel like they would've just told us a simple "no" if it wasn't going to happen. Maybe we should look at which existing civs haven't been in previews or demo builds and start speculating from there?

 

[kingchris20]

We've asked about other revamped civs since these Q&As began. By now I feel like they would've just told us a simple "no" if it wasn't going to happen. Maybe we should look at which existing civs haven't been in previews or demo builds and start speculating from there?

The only existing civ I remember seeing was France, and they have a UA change

 

[HemlockMartinis]

The only existing civ I remember seeing was France, and they have a UA change

I've seen others but I can't remember which ones off the top of my head. Athens can be seen in the tenth screenshot here, for example.

Edit: Here's Germany too.