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

[ausberg]

And if you want to salvage your current game, you can use IGE and delete the civ / unit / city causing it. It often works, but identifying the problem can be tedious. If it CTDs during a specific AI's turn, try deleting the whole civ (if it does not work, then try the AI civ whose turn is before and after). Once you identify the civ, reload and try deleting its units / or cities. Better try with deleting whole groups of them, 1 by 1 would be a nightmare.

I think I'd rather pluck out all of my eyebrows one at a time. I guess playing these experimental beta patches just isn't worth it. Does anyone know if 3-15-2 is pretty stable or how far back should I go so I can just play the game without nonsensical crashes? 2017 full release version?

 

[tommytoxen]

I think I'd rather pluck out all of my eyebrows one at a time. I guess playing these experimental beta patches just isn't worth it. Does anyone know if 3-15-2 is pretty stable or how far back should I go so I can just play the game without nonsensical crashes? 2017 full release version?

I've not had any crashes yet and I'm pretty late in the game (atomic era).

Might help if you let us know which modmods & non-VP related mods you're using.

If you're not using any other mods other than vanilla VP then try emptying cache, verifying files and then reinstall VP. you could just have a corrupt or rogue file somewhere.

 

[Zoce]

I think I'd rather pluck out all of my eyebrows one at a time. I guess playing these experimental beta patches just isn't worth it. Does anyone know if 3-15-2 is pretty stable or how far back should I go so I can just play the game without nonsensical crashes? 2017 full release version?

It is stable. play at your most pleasure

 

[vyyt]

I think I'd rather pluck out all of my eyebrows one at a time. I guess playing these experimental beta patches just isn't worth it. Does anyone know if 3-15-2 is pretty stable or how far back should I go so I can just play the game without nonsensical crashes? 2017 full release version?

Yeah, that sounds like an option

The last non-beta version is from July 2019 I think. It is linked in the main install thread. Maybe I am just lucky, but I haven't had a CTD for about a year and I always play the latest betas (I skip many of them, because my games take too long)

 

[ausberg]

Yeah, that sounds like an option

The last non-beta version is from July 2019 I think. It is linked in the main install thread. Maybe I am just lucky, but I haven't had a CTD for about a year and I always play the latest betas (I skip many of them, because my games take too long)

I posted the issue on the Github and ilteroi responded that it is a known issue and will be fixed in an upcoming version. I see 6-12-2019 as the newest available non-beta version. Is that the correct one?

 

[Thibix Magnus]

I have trouble connecting to github so I post here, sorry if I missed it if addressed already. Either bugs or tooltip looking for updates:

Urbanization tenet does not give more food to GPI tiles.

Prophecy perk that halves follower removal from prophets doesn't seem to work, rival prophets get your followers to zero.

Also, is it intended that now melee ships can't attack from citadels? They could in previous patch.

Thanks for all the work

 

[Revolutionist_8]

Urbanization tenet does not give more food to GPI tiles.

This one I can answer for sure because I have encountered it recently and had fallen into the same mistake as now you did I also thought that it's farms, pastures, camps and Great Person Improvements, but the latter is actually unique improvements, aka Civilization specifics (terrace farm, eki, chateu, etc.)

Spoiler code :

('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_FARM', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_PLANTATION', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_CAMP', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_TERRACE_FARM', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_EKI', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_KUNA', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_ENCAMPMENT_SHOSHONE', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_POLDER', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_CHATEAU', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_KASBAH', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_BRAZILWOOD_CAMP', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_MOAI', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),
    ('POLICY_URBANIZATION', 'IMPROVEMENT_FEITORIA', 'YIELD_FOOD', 4),

 

[Legen]

You know, New Deal could add food to GPI.

 

[Recursive]

I have trouble connecting to github so I post here, sorry if I missed it if addressed already. Either bugs or tooltip looking for updates:

Urbanization tenet does not give more food to GPI tiles.

Prophecy perk that halves follower removal from prophets doesn't seem to work, rival prophets get your followers to zero.

Also, is it intended that now melee ships can't attack from citadels? They could in previous patch.

Thanks for all the work

Ships not being able to attack from citadels is intended.

New Deal Urbanization refers to unique improvements not GPTIs, as already stated.

I'll report the prophecy issue on Github for you.

 

[Thibix Magnus]

This one I can answer for sure because I have encountered it recently and had fallen into the same mistake as now you did I also thought that it's farms, pastures, camps and Great Person Improvements, but the latter is actually unique improvements, aka Civilization specifics (terrace farm, eki, chateu, etc.)

OOOPS

Ships not being able to attack from citadels is intended.

New Deal refers to unique improvements not GPTIs, as already stated.

I'll report the prophecy issue on Github for you.

thanks!!

 

[Legen]

New Deal refers to unique improvements not GPTIs, as already stated.

Urbanization boosts unique improvements, New Deal improves GPTI.

 

[Recursive]

Urbanization boosts unique improvements, New Deal improves GPTI.

Typo.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm pulling some quotes from the balance poll thread. G specifically asked for no discussion in that thread, but there were a few comments I wanted to give my opinion on.

-> Stealth Bombers, consistently under. The late game is crawling with air defense now, and even if they make it through, they tend to take an untenable amount of damage, especially from cities.,,
-> SDS building+Mil Base absolutely wrecks airpower without any clear counter.

I both agree and disagree with you on this one. On the one hand, I think stealth bombers are awesome against land forces. I click, and they die, from practically anywhere in my civ, an incredible power. However, I think your right that military bases especially give too much air defense, and it makes city attacks hurt too much.

I didn't have time to post my suggestions this week. I'd have added:
Buildings
The recent nerf to Chanceries and Wire Services have left them subpar, except for diplomatic superpowers (e.g. with 5+ allies). It was warranted because the scaling was too good for those superpowers, but now they should only rarely be built.

4/ Pantheons: We need to test Tutelary Gods in the hands of Spain. It may be too strong for them.

Promotions
I've been going Drill a lot more than Shock recently. Now that melee units are OK against cities again, and given that the flanking bonus from Shock is not impactful, I find Drill much more useful.

I think chanceries are still a fine building. I mean you can still easily snag 5-10 hammers off of them (+15 or more late game), what else gives that production at that point in the game? For wire service I can see the concern, they are a much more late game building, and maybe a little static bonus would be reasonable for them.

Damn Omen, now I have to debate between a CV Tall game or a Spain Tutelary game for my first outing. Which one do you think I should try?

On the Drill vs Shock. I'm seeing this crop up from several people. Ultimately to me it comes down to....a little benefit most of the time, or a strong benefit on occasion? I find drill very useful in the early game, when melee units are serving double duty. By castle era...melee units take a lot pain when they hit a city unless they have CA...I generally prefer to have them hold territory and let the siege do its work. Drill to me gets a resurgence around fusiliers (mainly when I get military academies). Once I can churn out Drill II CA infantry on the spot, it becomes a lot more useful again. Also good for amphibious assault, even with the -50% penalty, a Drill II CA fusilier does respectable damage to a city, and can have a naval unit to protect them from counter damage.

Meanwhile, Shock has a weaker bonus, but the majority of combat in the game is unit on unit. So that shock bonus pays more often, especially for mounted. Also overrun is a very solid Tier IV promotion to continue the open field pain.

So personally I'm not convinced a change is needed here, I use both lines often, just at different times in the game, which honestly is the best balance I could hope for.

• God of Sun - +3 faith for an early Ancient Era building seems too much, considering that other pantheons give less for later buildings (i.e. Herbalist, Goddess of Protection). I suggest giving a +1 faith to Wheat tiles instead

​

Since Sun was one of the pantheons I called out (and one I've been trying to use a lot recently), let me share why I think the change was a good one.

If you consider most Faith Lite pantheons, the main way to found with them is to adopt a "shrine first" strategy in your cities (or get lucky and secure faith through a nice ruin or Faith CS or something). The shrine first + whatever other faith the pantheon generates, can often tip the scales and let you found....probably one of the last ones, but found nonetheless.

With Sun, you are greatly encouraged to build your granary as the first building. I actually like pantheons that make me play differently so no issue with that. But the trick is...the granary is as much effort to build as a shrine. So building a granary first has given me the same faith start as someone else going shrine first....but that's it. That other person is ALSO getting extra faith from its pantheon. Until I build both the granary and the shrine for sun...I am behind on faith, and in my experience so far behind its often not possible to found on Emperor.

To give an example, lets look at Festivals, which is often used as a nice pantheon that is tough to found with. With festivals, I go shrine first always. However, at the exact same time I am building those shrines, my workers are securing me new resources, and I'm trading resources to get more faith. I am able to do more in parallel to get my faith with festivals. With sun, the only thing I can do is build buildings in my city, other than investment, there is no way to generate faith more quickly....and that faith is not enough. Now, with a +3 faith granary...I get a jumpstart with granary first, and that matters a lot.

That alone is probably enough to justify a buff to Sun, but Sun also suffers another problem...culture. All shrine first strategies deal with a lack of culture, that's just the name of the game. However, most go shrine + monument...and then their culture becomes right again. And several faith lite pantheons (like hunt or festivals), bring there own extra culture to the table....so I can go shrine first "guilt free".

In order for Sun to be competitive on faith, you have to Granary...and then shrine....and then monument. That is a HUGE delay in your culture, with no culture compensation from the pantheon. That is hard to swallow. At least now my faith is more competitive, and I start out with a crazy amount of growth. So its still has merit, but you are still culture starved compared to other pantheons....so hardly OP.

I actually think a +1 faith to wheat (or even wheat farms) would actually be a much stronger buff than the granary one, because normally in my satellite cities (which are going to have wheat, else why did I choose sun)….I will faith generation the second that city is made....as opposed until when I build the granary. Those turns of "free faith" add up a lot in the faith race.

​

 

[Omen of Peace]

I think chanceries are still a fine building. I mean you can still easily snag 5-10 hammers off of them (+15 or more late game), what else gives that production at that point in the game? For wire service I can see the concern, they are a much more late game building, and maybe a little static bonus would be reasonable for them.

As usual with hammer buildings, you have to check how long it takes to recoup the cost. If you get 2-3 hammers, it's going to take a very long time.

5-10 hammers mean 5-10 allies now. If you're in this situation, then you're very much a diplomatic superpower, but imagine the bonus the other civ are getting.
I concede Chanceries can be good enough if you get friendly with many CS. But that's quite volatile.
I think I noticed the issue more in the previous beta when there were more wars, so perhaps we can leave this as "under observation" for now.

Wire Services have 7 gp maintenance and cost a lot of hammers to produce, so they're indeed more of a problem.

Damn Omen, now I have to debate between a CV Tall game or a Spain Tutelary game for my first outing. Which one do you think I should try?

I would say CV because balance between victory conditions is a thornier issues than just 1 Pantheon, and needs more analysis.

On the Drill vs Shock. I'm seeing this crop up from several people.
[...]
So personally I'm not convinced a change is needed here, I use both lines often, just at different times in the game, which honestly is the best balance I could hope for.

I used to split troups between both, so I get what you're saying. In a way, it shows how balance is subtle: just because melee troups are now worth using agaisnt cities has led me to change the promotion mix.​

 

[andersw]

Typo.

I'm confused, what happened with Heathcliffwarrior?

 

[andersw]

Emp, pangea, epic, Arabia finished (domination), 4-10 version.
Authority -> statecraft which included a surround by Shaka, Askia and Atilla.
My luck was that Atilla was busy with Greece and England "all game" ... well until I got there.
Thanks to a two turn settler move I got desert near capital and managed to grab petra, nice for Arabia, nice for statecraft.
I got open sky and had something like 15 pastures in my 4 first cities.
Avoided coastal cities but had to defend one nearby coastal CS that had a very narrow escape from Shaka capture.
Tried "holy land" reformation belief, with 4GP tiles and several arch digs+statecraft meant I had 19 votes (more than all the remaining AI's together) at the end.
Not sure how relevant it really was, no game breaking votes had taken place yet.
The extra CS yields (now 20% prev 50% or well says 50 in the wiki) is ofc nice when you're sitting on most if not all CS alliances.
The AI worked a lot to keep my religion off the CS, england also couped two city states which did cost quite a bit in hammers and gold to get back on my side.
Terrain chokes/mountains saved Shaka and England until the very end when they got steam rolled.
No bugs found. No CTD.
Edit: Camel archers was ok but not gamebreaking, a bit extra str and splash, I dont think I got any splash 2 (went straight for logistics instead).

 

[Stalker0]

5-10 hammers mean 5-10 allies now. If you're in this situation, then you're very much a diplomatic superpower, but imagine the bonus the other civ are getting.​

I would say if your not pursing friendships and alliances (10 friends is +10 gold per city, that's still pretty solid)….than no reason to build chanceries! Don't build it if you don't need it.

 

[Recursive]

Some more diplomacy edits for next version:

Bugfixes & performance improvements
- Fixed an issue with the AI not correctly recognizing when a player was a cultural victory threat
- Fixed a major issue with AI military strength estimations (fixing this should have a lot of positive effects; thanks to psparky for discovering this!)
- Fixed a CTD

Approach / Friendships
- Significantly improved AI logic for recognizing and banding together against conquerors, especially pre-Renaissance era
- This should make it much harder for players to steamroll over everyone without resistance
- AI is more aggressive towards players who wipe out civilizations entirely rather than vassalizing them or leaving them with at least one city
- Further adjustments to early game aggression
- AI now uses its religion flavor in the shared/divergent religion check, and its culture flavor in the shared/divergent ideology check
- Improved "major competitor" logic
- Nullified GUARDED/DECEPTIVE weight from AI masters towards their vassals under most circumstances
- Fixed some issues with vassal hostility
- Vassals will no longer compete for victory or become aggressive towards easy targets
- AI players who have lost their capital will become more friendly towards others (not counting the conqueror!)

City liberation logic
- AIs bent on Domination Victory will never liberate a major civilization's original capital
- AI will resurrect allies or liberate their cities more often

Coop Wars
- Improved logic for banding together against conquerors
- AI is more likely to ask players who've gone on coop wars with them before to start coop wars
- AI is more likely to accept requests to start coop wars from players who have gone on coop wars with them before

Other
- Bullying a City-State no longer generates a notification for the bully

 

[JamesNinelives]

Meanwhile, Shock has a weaker bonus, but the majority of combat in the game is unit on unit. So that shock bonus pays more often, especially for mounted.

Oh sure, shock seems more useful for mounted units in most cases. My expection is Byzantium's UU which is decent against cities already (plus I like the +1 sight promotion that drill leads to for mounted melee). Drill still seems strong for melee units past a certain point (e.g Tercios onwards) just because their role in my army tends to shielding my other units rather than making attacks, until I can take a city. That said, I don't feel the imbalance is particularly large. And tbh I don't really understand what +5% flanking bonus actually means in a fight, which might be skewing my perception.

Until I build both the granary and the shrine for sun

I agree without comments about Sun generally, and I think the change is good! I assumed this is what you're supposed to do if you take Sun though? When I take pantheons that give faith on a building I always go Shrine and then whatever that building is next (if possible). I find myself competing for the religious choices I want most of the time (also on Emperor) so faith output is my focus for much of the early-game.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I agree without comments about Sun generally, and I think the change is good! I assumed this is what you're supposed to do if you take Sun though? When I take pantheons that give faith on a building I always go Shrine and then whatever that building is next (if possible). I mean, I find myself competing for a religion much of the time (also on Emperor) so faith output is my focus for much of the early-game.

Also, out of curiosity what are considered the faith-heavy pantheons at the moment? Something like Ancestor Worship? I haven't really kept up, and it might help me make sense of who is founding (and founding first) in my games.

I think God of the sea is still the strongest, the easiest to found with & most faith heavy pantheon in the game but it's balanced by the fact that it requires fishing boats -a one use only unit requiring a T2 tech- instead of workers, it really does not scale at all so it's just an early game pantheon to get a religion with, it's terrain dependent and forces you to settle at least 3 cities along the coast which messes with the strategic city placement to grab land or forward settle as you usually want to do in the early game.
The other one is God of open sky that i think it deserves a nerf, it generates a lot of relevant yields in the early game, it scales into mid game -especially the culture- quiet nicely and it boosts the early game economy like no other pantheon.
God of war generates a lot of faith for founding but it's one of the harder ones to use right now, unless your civ have an ancient UU, you are not really going to war in the ancient era after archer nerf.
Spirit of Desert and God of stars and sky also work but to a lesser extent.