New Beta Patch - April 7th (4-7)

[MIS]

Not at all.
The game i'm currently in is a nightmare ..... there is Mongolia, Rome & Japan constantly waging wars & stepping on each other toes ... killing CS, bullying, stealing land.
Mongolia vassalized Ethiopia at medieval era, Rome captured Japan's capital at pretty much the same time .... went to war endlessly .... i let Canada have one city .. polynesia was just chilling the entire game until i got close to winning CV.

T84 in my game (King); Shaka declares on Theodora.

 

[tommytoxen]

I've modified early game aggression logic for next version, as described here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-beta-patch-april-7th-4-7.656818/page-3#post-15729168

I believe we're getting closer to a good passive/aggressive balance with the diplo AI. The recent changes have provided some good feedback. I still intend to do more work over time, but the approach calculation (which is a huge chunk of the diplo AI's code; ~4000 lines or so) is getting closer to completion.

Looking forward to people's thoughts next version.

I think you're striking a good balance at the moment you're definitely on the right track.

I play marathon so it takes me a lot longer to chime in than others, I updated to your latest version last night and started a new game.

Diplomacy seems a lot more.. what's the word. Organic, natural now than before, it's not as jarring. AI's actions and behaviour towards you is starting to make sense now.

I'm friends with the iroqouis for example, and they were struggling a little in the beginning. I gave them some GPT and tech to help them out.

Later in the game I'm locked in an endless war on the other continent trying to liberate a city state from china but they're kicking my pattootie at the minute, it's only my navy keeping me afloat, the city state is landlocked though so the navy can only help with keeping my beach head secure. I only have a small overstretched army and I'm constantly having to retreat to heal before going back in so the war isn't going well. I'm falling behind in science and tech

Anyway I got a popup from the iroqouis "in my time of need" they offered ME some tech, and a little later, sent me gold.

Could be confirmation bias or pure coincidence but I thought that was pretty cool, it's giving an illusion that the iroqous remembered me helping htem out and repaid the favour. Pretty cool.

So there seems to be a good balance of aggression and friendliness that seems to be quite consistent, so looking forward to see where you take it.

 

[adan_eslavo]

I lost that game, but noticed few things worth mentioning:

• option "swap and optimize" in culture tab doesn't work as intended. I almost each time after clicking it, lost my toursim instead of increasing it. Later on I only "optimized", because manual search is a horror... any suggestions?
• late game auto-scouting with zeppelin failed. My unit stopped and when I was clicking "automate" it didn't respond. When I looked over map I noticed few big cfog clusters and when moving it manually I found 3 founded cities!
• when I got Uranium (but also other strategic), I had about 4-5 copies. Then Theodora asked me if I trade 4 (!). Seriously? She was very dissappointed with my response.
• could you add some notification for League wonders? Is there any way to disable some kind of notifications on the right? I had such spam, I didn't noticed that League Wonders have to be built and I missed all of them, because I was doing something else...

I wanted to win by culture, but hell, it was tough and I didn't manage to convience Morocco. Do you have any suggestions? It would be good to have also some notification that some player achieved number of delegates == needed to win by diplomacy. I missed that too and that's why I lost. I even started to build spaceship parts... Oh boy, if economic and religious victory would be there.

And one more thing: Decolonization suc*s! I was ruling over half of the world and the in a blink of an eye I had nothing left, but Milan... But to be honest, it is painful when you have 1500 influence with 4-5 CS and then click, and you have 50. Couldn't it be 50% of value? Or anything?

 

[ASCII Guy]

I lost that game, but noticed few things worth mentioning:

• option "swap and optimize" in culture tab doesn't work as intended. I almost each time after clicking it, lost my toursim instead of increasing it. Later on I only "optimized", because manual search is a horror... any suggestions?

I assume that is happening because the less ideal great works are being put up, which while it temporally lowers your tourism, can lead to theming bonuses. I never go for CV though so my understanding of the tourism mechanics is limited.

 

[adan_eslavo]

I assume that is happening because the less ideal great works are being put up, which while it temporally lowers your tourism, can lead to theming bonuses. I never go for CV though so my understanding of the tourism mechanics is limited.

I was playing China, and one CS from UCS on alliance was giving me +1 to Great Works, so it was natural choice.

 

[tommytoxen]

this may have been like it before and i've just never noticed until now, but war seems as frequent as you'd expect. there is a lot of friendliness but also just as much war, but the wars seem to be making just as much sense as the friendliness which is great.

for example look where austria and the huns have plonked cities here. if they did that to me you can 100% bet i would have gone to war and razed them by now. and indeed, babylon declared war and took it, and poland just declared war on the huns and going to take it.





overall i'm happy with these updates. but like i said maybe i'm only just noticing these little things now because i'm actually looking out for them, but yeah. diplomacy looking good.

though i wish the AI would stop harassing me every 2-3 turns. i keep getting offers for the last X amount of strategic resource i have. NO YOU CANNOT HAVE MY LAST 2 HORSES I NEED THEM GO AWAY STOP SPAMMING ME WITH THE SAME OFFER! i'm looking at you austria

 

[SilentReply]

option "swap and optimize" in culture tab doesn't work as intended. I almost each time after clicking it, lost my toursim instead of increasing it. Later on I only "optimized", because manual search is a horror... any suggestions?

I've noticed that even "optimize" alone will often fail to allocate the works optimally. It will usually do an ok job, but if you really want to ensure you are getting the maximal theming bonuses, you have to do it manually. Coding it perfectly sounds like a nightmare. But I think a feature to "lock" great works in a wonder/building would be a good intermediate step. That would allow you to manually set up the major theme bonuses from wonders, lock them, and then let the auto optimize feature sort out the small ones.

 

[tu_79]

I've noticed that even "optimize" alone will often fail to allocate the works optimally. It will usually do an ok job, but if you really want to ensure you are getting the maximal theming bonuses, you have to do it manually. Coding it perfectly sounds like a nightmare. But I think a feature to "lock" great works in a wonder/building would be a good intermediate step. That would allow you to manually set up the major theme bonuses from wonders, lock them, and then let the auto optimize feature sort out the small ones.

Actually, it is not that bad that the auto optimize action is worse than doing it manually. This way, people that want to dig into maximizing from great works can have fun. I'm fine with the optimizer just improving the yields over the "do nothing" scenario, and not being better than doing it manually.

 

[andersw]

I was able to have a lot of friends early on, but it soon turned into turmoil, a lot of the wars have had dogpiling.
I also had something I've not seen forever, me and Babylon were stomping on Askia and with one city left he vassals to Greece.
The amount of wars are somewhat to be expected with Askia (songhai), Shaka (Zulu), Harald (Denmark), Atilla (Hun) and Alexander (greece).
Add that greece, me and england fights for city state control.

 

[Recursive]

Hi. Some questions/feedback on ideas.

War desire reduction from other players' Defensive Pacts is now more nuanced
- Factors in proximity​

Is this also factoring in proximity of DP partner to attacked nation? For instance, if Civ1 wants to DoW Civ2 with a DP with Civ3. Civ1 and Civ2 are "close", however Civ1 and Civ3 are "far", BUT Civ2 and Civ3 are "neighbors", such that Civ3 will easily be able to channel units into Civ2's territory, is that taken into account? Is that relevant in how the AI will act also (I'm not sure about how the AI calculates to involve itself in DP wars where it's not directly invaded or near the Civ1 in this instance).

Also a side note on the world wonder penalty (which I agree is a PITA as it was in the March version): I feel making it a comparison to the next highest wonder builder is going to lead to some "unpleasant" scenarios where that 2nd place guy loses a city and suddenly forces the player to get the penalty despite not building any new wonders. I would suggest an equation rather than strict cutoffs for penalties:

y=1.038462-1.538462/(1+(x/1.259317)^{3.169925}) //throw that in here to see curve https://www.desmos.com/calculator
Where X =( [civ#wonders] / [#totalwondersbuilt] ) / ( 1 / [#alivecivs] )

gives a nice curve that gives a bonus to relations of 50% if you have 0 wonders, a 0 bonus when your #wonders is the same as your equal share per civ, and rises fast after that up to 100% negative relation modifier at 4x your "fair share" (so if there's 16 wonders built and 8 civs, if you've built 8 wonders you get ~100% neg relations mod).

Explanation:
1. I like whenever there's a negative relations modifier, there should be a positive one (albeit lesser perhaps). Essentially, AIs are using wonder distribution to choose DoW targets, and being a "wonder lite" civ should be helpful to relations likewise.
2. Polynomial curves instead of clear switches are preferable always imo. Perhaps not from a performance standpoint, but certainly from a general humans (and AI) relations standpoint we generally respond proportionally rather than on/off.
3. This curve basically maxes out around 4x your fair share, and rises quickly then sort of plateaus, which makes sense as a "a lot of wonders" and "a super lot of wonders" should be less of a difference in relations than "fair share" and "a lot".

Quick question: is all of this diplo/AI changes in the .dll or does it require the full VP?

If Civ A has a DP with Civ B, and Civ B has at least average military strength, then AI will be less likely to go to war with Civ A (moreso if Civ B is strong and nearby).

The wonder spammer penalty was nerfed substantially - do you still find it unreasonable?

It's based on the median number of wonders constructed now. Only if the difference with a civ would result in a smaller penalty than the difference from the median does it use the difference between the civs. For instance, if Egypt has built 7 Wonders and you've built 8, Egypt won't be upset with you for wonder spamming (although he might begrudge you for wonder competition), because he's a wonder spammer himself. But other civs might.

Losing cities (or even being killed by another civ) has no effect on the value used to calculate the median, because it's stored in memory at the player value, increased by 1 for each wonder constructed (conquered wonders don't count, and as of the 4-10 DLL, neither do world congress projects or corporation buildings). It does not check if the civ still has the wonders they constructed or if they're still alive.

Too many bonuses for not getting in the AI's way results in too much friendliness on the AI's part, and the game becomes less challenging. But thank you for your feedback and ideas, I'll take them into consideration.

and when can we use those improvements? or when would that next version be released approximately?

Next version will be released whenever Gazebo has some time - he's very busy at the moment.

If there was demand for it, I suppose I could make a new build, but with a beta, a patch and a third DLL already out there I'd rather not make things more confusing.

I think you're striking a good balance at the moment you're definitely on the right track.

I play marathon so it takes me a lot longer to chime in than others, I updated to your latest version last night and started a new game.

Diplomacy seems a lot more.. what's the word. Organic, natural now than before, it's not as jarring. AI's actions and behaviour towards you is starting to make sense now.

I'm friends with the iroqouis for example, and they were struggling a little in the beginning. I gave them some GPT and tech to help them out.

Later in the game I'm locked in an endless war on the other continent trying to liberate a city state from china but they're kicking my pattootie at the minute, it's only my navy keeping me afloat, the city state is landlocked though so the navy can only help with keeping my beach head secure. I only have a small overstretched army and I'm constantly having to retreat to heal before going back in so the war isn't going well. I'm falling behind in science and tech

Anyway I got a popup from the iroqouis "in my time of need" they offered ME some tech, and a little later, sent me gold.

Could be confirmation bias or pure coincidence but I thought that was pretty cool, it's giving an illusion that the iroqous remembered me helping htem out and repaid the favour. Pretty cool.

So there seems to be a good balance of aggression and friendliness that seems to be quite consistent, so looking forward to see where you take it.

I'm glad it feels organic! That's the goal.

though i wish the AI would stop harassing me every 2-3 turns. i keep getting offers for the last X amount of strategic resource i have. NO YOU CANNOT HAVE MY LAST 2 HORSES I NEED THEM GO AWAY STOP SPAMMING ME WITH THE SAME OFFER! i'm looking at you austria

Ah, Firaxis's deal and diplo AI interaction logic. Truly a beauty. It's gonna be a pain to fix, but it'll be worth it when I eventually get around to it. I believe it's the kind of code Gazebo would describe as "written by a team of moderately trained monkeys".

 

[adan_eslavo]

Ah, Firaxis's deal and diplo AI interaction logic. Truly a beauty. It's gonna be a pain to fix, but it'll be worth it when I eventually get around to it. I believe it's the kind of code Gazebo would describe as "written by a team of moderately trained monkeys".

 

[andersw]

Forgot to mention my appreciation for exact trades when trading something for gold, ie I dont need to haggle.
And testing "holy land" reformation, looks like its been changed at some time...

 

[Rekk]

Losing cities (or even being killed by another civ) has no effect on the value used to calculate the median, because it's stored in memory at the player value, increased by 1 for each wonder constructed (conquered wonders don't count, and as of the 4-10 DLL, neither do world congress projects or corporation buildings). It does not check if the civ still has the wonders they constructed or if they're still alive.

Isn't part of the declare war code based on the wonder modifier? ie. declaring war because of potential wonder gain? If the declared no longer has those wonders, this is somewhat of a false modifier. Same in the opposite direction with a civ who conquered wonders but it's not affecting declare war greed.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I think this was reported here a couple of times before but i still think it's worth reporting again.
Coventry was a city just settled by England, it's in between my biggest cities, it's isolated from his capital, there is nothing worth settling for here besides maybe the 2 sheep ... there is no way this is considered a good move for the AI, it's like gifting me a free city for free ... we have similar military power so this is no a move backed by any sort of i dare you to attack.

Spoiler :

 

[MIS]

I was able to have a lot of friends early on, but it soon turned into turmoil, a lot of the wars have had dogpiling.
I also had something I've not seen forever, me and Babylon were stomping on Askia and with one city left he vassals to Greece.
The amount of wars are somewhat to be expected with Askia (songhai), Shaka (Zulu), Harald (Denmark), Atilla (Hun) and Alexander (greece).
Add that greece, me and england fights for city state control.

I'm on King, as Songhai, and crushing it. I'm ahead of Zulu (and #1 in the world) in "#Soldiers", and Manufacturing, and everything else. I'm not at war with anyone. After denouncing me, he declares on me. I've razed half his cities and destroyed most of his army. A lot of my military was far away, but with ManCavs and rivers and roads, it only turn a few turns to get to the front. Is this just a miscalculation by the AI? Should I GitHub it?

 

[MIS]

Also noticed with this patch, like others, that AI will under-protect satellites, and (relatively) over-protect the capital. When I go to satellites, I encounter one defender. When I go the the capital, they have seven.

 

[tu_79]

It's based on the median number of wonders constructed now. Only if the difference with a civ would

Do you check what this median values in real games? In my games, usually only 3 civs out of 8 are building wonders, which means that the median is usually 0 or a very low value.
Hope this value is only used for increasing the greed of warmongers looking for a target.

 

[Recursive]

Do you check what this median values in real games? In my games, usually only 3 civs out of 8 are building wonders, which means that the median is usually 0 or a very low value.
Hope this value is only used for increasing the greed of warmongers looking for a target.

It only counts civs who have built Wonders. Additionally, you need to have constructed at least 50% more Wonders than the global average (and at least 3 total) to get the penalty.

 

[Recursive]

I'm on King, as Songhai, and crushing it. I'm ahead of Zulu (and #1 in the world) in "#Soldiers", and Manufacturing, and everything else. I'm not at war with anyone. After denouncing me, he declares on me. I've razed half his cities and destroyed most of his army. A lot of my military was far away, but with ManCavs and rivers and roads, it only turn a few turns to get to the front. Is this just a miscalculation by the AI? Should I GitHub it?

The AI will not always make optimal war and peace decisions - not a bug.

 

[andersw]

I'm on King, as Songhai, and crushing it. I'm ahead of Zulu (and #1 in the world) in "#Soldiers", and Manufacturing, and everything else. I'm not at war with anyone. After denouncing me, he declares on me. I've razed half his cities and destroyed most of his army. A lot of my military was far away, but with ManCavs and rivers and roads, it only turn a few turns to get to the front. Is this just a miscalculation by the AI? Should I GitHub it?

Its probably a case of too low difficulty.
Wars in classic era are a lot more uncertain if you go up in difficulty.
With that said Shaka is one of the very agressive AIs who sort of are always looking for trouble (like Askia and Monsterzuma) not always able to correctly assess the situation.