More Q&A with Kate

[Yzman]

Yeah from that picture it appears that Zulu is close to -20 unhappiness, ignoring the overall so that clears my mind. It appears you can have overall happiness in the positive but still have those unhappiness close to or at -20.

 

[Talcove]

I have a pretty simple question;
Could we have more details (Stats, Requirements) on France's new Unique, the Chateau?

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

Question 1: (repeated question from the previous thread) Will modders still be able to use effects that are no longer in the game, such as France's old UA?

Question 2: (off-topic) With Matt Smith leaving the show, will Kate be the new Dr Who?

 

[whyidie]

It's -20 from public opinion, which is when the civ goes into a Revolutionary Wave. Get it?

Not entirely. Is this a new meter being introduced or the existing "unhappy" meter ?

 

[Arachnofiend]

It's a new meter. You can see that the Zulu are in the Civil Resistance stage even though they are in the positive for global happiness; the stage is fitting for the 18 unhappy they're getting from ideological pressure.

 

[PerceeP927]

I usually have -100 happiness on prince, I guess you guys don't play domination on huge maps

 

[Arachnofiend]

The game isn't balanced for huge maps it's balanced for standard. The last time I played a domination game was with the Iroquois on Emperor and I only dropped into unhappiness once, and even then it never went past -5.

 

[whyidie]

It's a new meter. You can see that the Zulu are in the Civil Resistance stage even though they are in the positive for global happiness; the stage is fitting for the 18 unhappy they're getting from ideological pressure.

Oooh, so we may actually be able to flip an AI controlled city ? Sounding better already.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I wonder if an AI city that's set to flip might appear more readily in peacemaking negotiations? The AI might weigh up that it's about to lose it anyway...

 

[sendos]

IIRC, in one screenshot people spotted that the combat penalty % was now equal to the unhappiness. -100 happiness is going to make war rather a challenge under that system.

If by challenge you mean impossible, then yes. Units will literally throw their weapons down and get cut to pieces. Unless the auto-annexation bug is properly addressed, this challenge could become a reality. Although, apparently you can resolve this bug yourself by pressing f6, i've yet to try that out.

I am still confused about the separation of the happiness meters in ideology. I know public opinion will determine whether you can change ideology but how are these separate happiness measurements calculated? It seems to me that if you want a happy society, +20 happiness overall is the magic number, according to that screenshot.

 

[kaspergm]

I am still confused about the separation of the happiness meters in ideology. I know public opinion will determine whether you can change ideology but how are these separate happiness measurements calculated? It seems to me that if you want a happy society, +20 happiness overall is the magic number, according to that screenshot.

No, the 20 would be a coincidence, the Public oppinion is based on your Culture compared to their Tourism. The greater their Tourism output is compared to your Culture, the more penalty you will get if you don't share their ideology I think.

 

[blackcatatonic]

This screenshot from http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_bravenewworld.html
shows the Zulu are down to +3 Happiness. So its not completely impossible to get them down to -20. Maybe its just -20 unhappiness from public opinion and not overall happiness.

This seems to clarify things nicely.

Having -20 happiness overall as the threshold would have been a pretty effective way of completely neutering the city-flipping mechanic.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah from that picture it appears that Zulu is close to -20 unhappiness, ignoring the overall so that clears my mind. It appears you can have overall happiness in the positive but still have those unhappiness close to or at -20.

I don't think that's the case. They talked about before how it's possible to ignore public opinion by building happiness buildings, getting luxuries, etc. to make up for the lost happiness.

 

[bcaiko]

As you guys have figured out, the third Q&A is live on the 2K Games Blog.
...
There are a TON of questions to go through. Could you restate it here for me?
I can't promise that it will be answered, but I can pass it along.

Thanks for being so responsive, Kate. And for feeding us thirsty CivFanatics some info.

If I may ask one question: After more than two-thirds of the Civilizations included with Gods & Kings were European, what made the designers and developers decide to add three more European Civs in Brave New World? Could they just not find Civs that fit the new mechanics from other parts of the world? Or were Portugal, Poland and the third European Civ just too good to pass up despite Civ5's seeming European bias (by my count, 15 out of 34 existing Civs are European)?

-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.

Ed Beach has mentioned that happiness was too easy to get in G&K, so they may have retooled it a bit. Still, I agree that as the system is set up now, this is only a tool for the AI against the human player.

 

[Seek]

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 disagree that "we can't allow the AI to change their happiness bonuses"; the AI could get other, less glaring handicaps that would sufficiently make up for a lower happiness handicap and allow this mechanic to work. G&K Enhanced Mod had zero AI happiness bonuses at all levels and increased bonuses in other areas (including better decision-making) and it was at least as competitive as vanilla G&K in general, able to expand, grow and conquer quite well.

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?

The AI builds happiness buildings.

I don't think that's the case. They talked about before how it's possible to ignore public opinion by building happiness buildings, getting luxuries, etc. to make up for the lost happiness.

Yes, I don't recall the devs talking about that (was it from PAX?) but I don't expect that Public Opinion unhappiness is what the answer was referring to since it used the word "happiness". Additionally check the second screenshot in this post - the tooltip on the Overall Happiness list in the Culture Victory tab says:

Unhappiness from Public Opinion is included in this total. At -20 or below this civilization will start to lose cities to revolt and may change to the public's Preferred Ideology.

Sounds like cities flip at -20 global happiness to me. Let's just hope AI happiness handicaps have been rebalanced.

 

[Loaf Warden]

I really don't. I'm not a big fan of random Great Prophets, coups, and other events that are currently in the game either, because it takes away some of the strategizing.

That's one of the things I liked about it. This is a strategy game, yes, but it's also a game about history. To me, having random things come up that I didn't expect to have to deal with adds to the immersion and enhances the illusion that I'm ruling an empire rather than just playing an elaborate game of chess. There shouldn't be any random events big enough to dismantle your empire and ruin the whole game--it is still a strategy game, after all, and not a complete history simulator. But I liked having minor random events.

 

[OldmansHQ]

Flipping cities on higher difficulty levels is impossible if the AI has to have -20 Happiness. Unless they removed these insane bonuses, meaning they absolutely recreated AI, this is a failure from the get go. They could not recreate the AI, not that much, especially when there is so many other new features...

Maybe Firaxis implemented some new system, which allows AI to keep their bonuses and remain under the flipping threat? Because it is highly unlikely that they changed the AI to the point where they can full heartedly remove their fake bonuses, it's just not going to happen.

 

[ImperialChaos]

That's one of the things I liked about it. This is a strategy game, yes, but it's also a game about history. To me, having random things come up that I didn't expect to have to deal with adds to the immersion and enhances the illusion that I'm ruling an empire rather than just playing an elaborate game of chess. There shouldn't be any random events big enough to dismantle your empire and ruin the whole game--it is still a strategy game, after all, and not a complete history simulator. But I liked having minor random events.

I agree.

I loved the random events. It added some personality (weddings, spy espionage, airplane crashes) as well as unexpected disasters that most leaders have to adapt to (tornadoes, mine disasters). I hope someone will make the Civil War's random events into a mod that can be implemented into the main game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Flipping cities on higher difficulty levels is impossible if the AI has to have -20 Happiness. Unless they removed these insane bonuses, meaning they absolutely recreated AI, this is a failure from the get go. They could not recreate the AI, not that much, especially when there is so many other new features...

Maybe Firaxis implemented some new system, which allows AI to keep their bonuses and remain under the flipping threat? Because it is highly unlikely that they changed the AI to the point where they can full heartedly remove their fake bonuses, it's just not going to happen.

You wouldn't need to absolutely recreate the AI... instead you would recreate the AIs bonuses.
You don't need the AI to play any smarter, just substitute happiness and gold bonuses with production, growth, research, social policy, great person, combat, etc. bonuses

 

[mitsho]

I agree.

I loved the random events. It added some personality (weddings, spy espionage, airplane crashes) as well as unexpected disasters that most leaders have to adapt to (tornadoes, mine disasters). I hope someone will make the Civil War's random events into a mod that can be implemented into the main game.

If you want to use them, the GEM mod already incorporates a Opportunities system built nearly exactly like the Random Events from Civ4 are (major change: no only bad events, nothing that only costs you ressources).

See the communitas subforum for more

You wouldn't need to absolutely recreate the AI... instead you would recreate the AIs bonuses.
You don't need the AI to play any smarter, just substitute happiness and gold bonuses with production, growth, research, social policy, great person, combat, etc. bonuses

Agreed. The biggest problem for AI seem to be how to spend their ressources efficiently. This is done via the leader flavours. Now you can 'optimize' these so the AI is best at winning the game, but that essentially reduces them to one strategy. So you create 3 or 4 optimal leader flavours (for the playstyles), but now these leaders are very easily calculated since they have next to no randomness in their decision. It's the problem of having to find the balance between the optimal flavours and making these variable enough to allow for randomness and leader personality.

At the moment though, the civ5 AI could use a lot of retooling towards optimization. (and as GEM has also shown, basic code of forcing the AI to use up its ). On a last note, I'd also like for the AI to not pay fixed prices in diplomacy but only buy stuff they really need and for the price its worth for them.