New Beta Version - 1-11 (1/11)

[LifeOfBrian]

I support the idea of starting with a warrior and a pathfinder, even on Deity. I'd also support significantly extending the "grace" period where Barbarians can't enter a civ's territory or, alternatively, changing things so that if you have a military unit (even a pathfinder) inside a city, barbarians cannot steal your yields from the city. That way, they'll still hassle you by pillaging and blocking your tiles, but the "randomness" factor won't hurt the civs in the very early game.

 

[bigcat88]

I played with advanced setup and we all(me and AI) start with pathfinder and warrior.
Not a big impact to start, but game become more dynamically.

 

[Stalker0]

I can definitely say while its not all the time, there are definitely the times I get the "4 barb swarm"....and there's nothing I can do but restart.

 

[Stalker0]

FML....look what just showed up.

 

[Stalker0]

Sigh, Xcoms might need a bit of a nerf with their new tech position, or maybe a prod cost increase or something. England is literally making these guys faster than I can kill them....and they aren't all that squishy.

If the AI has more Xcoms than my entire supply....is that time to throw in the towel?

 

[Stalker0]

Communitas_Tu (Terra start) Immortal. Standard Speed. Lost (quit) on Turn 391.

I finally got a Terra game worth talking about. This was a brutal slugfest. I can now safely confirm that the "hive mind" I mentioned before was not a fluke....there is a serious problem with diplomacy at the moment. Nonstop wars all game. Spain hits me with 2 9 destroyer fleets. I start to deal with it, England comes from the south with a 12 ship fleet. I start to handle that....Russia comes in with a massive land army. Ok holding on....Rome crushes from the west with his own big land army. Over and over and over and over again. This map is particular brutal for that because its so large (even for standard size). So I can't make just 1 fleet, I have to have several fleets in order to cover territory, the few times I have tried otherwise my cities got sacked too quickly. And making multiple fleets that can take on a full AI fleet takes a lot of hammers.

War Weariness crushed me all game. I think I was at 50% production reduction due to war weariness from the midgame on, and got as high as 75%. When I am dealing with 7 different fronts, eventually losses start to accrue, and I never got a breather to recover. As such, my cities were spending twice as long as normal to generate troops...which meant I wasn't building buildings....so happiness tanked....which meant I stopped to build buildings....so I didn't have enough troops....so I started to lose some....increasing war weariness….bleh!

Also....whether its perception or not....I truly feel "picked on" in these games. I was score leader at one point, but England then surpassed me in score, pop, culture, and science. Not by a huge margin, but by every important metric England was winning the game. But did England get declared? Nope. Did England get sanctions and decolonizations thrown at her? Nope. No...England gets defensive pacts and people actually defending her when I try to sanction or decolonize her. It just felt extremely unfair. And ultimately when it comes to games, user perception is reality.

So my last report before the new version....though if the diplomacy AI is the same in the next version I'll likely skip it...I can only take the pummeling for so long.

 

[Recursive]

Communitas_Tu (Terra start) Immortal. Standard Speed. Lost (quit) on Turn 391.

I finally got a Terra game worth talking about. This was a brutal slugfest. I can now safely confirm that the "hive mind" I mentioned before was not a fluke....there is a serious problem with diplomacy at the moment. Nonstop wars all game. Spain hits me with 2 9 destroyer fleets. I start to deal with it, England comes from the south with a 12 ship fleet. I start to handle that....Russia comes in with a massive land army. Ok holding on....Rome crushes from the west with his own big land army. Over and over and over and over again. This map is particular brutal for that because its so large (even for standard size). So I can't make just 1 fleet, I have to have several fleets in order to cover territory, the few times I have tried otherwise my cities got sacked too quickly. And making multiple fleets that can take on a full AI fleet takes a lot of hammers.

War Weariness crushed me all game. I think I was at 50% production reduction due to war weariness from the midgame on, and got as high as 75%. When I am dealing with 7 different fronts, eventually losses start to accrue, and I never got a breather to recover. As such, my cities were spending twice as long as normal to generate troops...which meant I wasn't building buildings....so happiness tanked....which meant I stopped to build buildings....so I didn't have enough troops....so I started to lose some....increasing war weariness….bleh!

Also....whether its perception or not....I truly feel "picked on" in these games. I was score leader at one point, but England then surpassed me in score, pop, culture, and science. Not by a huge margin, but by every important metric England was winning the game. But did England get declared? Nope. Did England get sanctions and decolonizations thrown at her? Nope. No...England gets defensive pacts and people actually defending her when I try to sanction or decolonize her. It just felt extremely unfair. And ultimately when it comes to games, user perception is reality.

So my last report before the new version....though if the diplomacy AI is the same in the next version I'll likely skip it...I can only take the pummeling for so long.

Diplo AI aggression has been reduced for the upcoming version, never fear.

 

[civplayer33]

Xcoms might need a bit of a nerf with their new tech position, or maybe a prod cost increase or something. England is literally making these guys faster than I can kill them....and they aren't all that squishy.

Well you shouldn't be trying to kill them with Tercios

 

[crdvis16]

Let's talk about barbarians.

Just tried a two player game, on turn 3, he moved his pathfinder onto a hill. There are two barbarians on the other side, the pathfinder dies. That is such a huge loss, it seriously just cripples his entire game. I collected like 10 ruins while he got none, and I'm two social policies ahead by turn 60. I agreed we could just restart, because his early game not only is difficulty, it is unfun.

On the restart, I'm annoyed because I went from great land to tundra, but hey, I still think its the right decision. I lose about 90 food by getting raided by barbarians within 20 turns, on an already low food start. Now CrazyG, were you being greedy? Why didn't you build a military unit?

Well, I did! I had already bought a warrior, the barbs just run past him to annoy the city. They also terrorize it, so I get that archer later. I lose some culture too. Which is great, that way even if I wanted to take authority, the barbs would all be dead by the time I got culture for kills. The warrior did stop a few raids, but I would need at least 3 units to stop them entirely, which isn't reasonable. This is going to get even harder if archers have one range.

I don't think there is a single thing either of us should have done differently in these games. It happens to me most often when I already started on tundra, like come on man. It feels so bad to experience this. After spending all that time setting up Civ and getting my friend to try the mod, we just decided to play another game.

We have this thing were barbs just avoid for territory for X turns, depending on difficulty. Frankly that isn't a solution. It was added to address these complaints, but it doesn't. Along with no 2 range for cities, they are really hard to deal with early game, the 1/10 games you get swarmed.

Can we please take away the barbarian penalty on pathfinders and scouts? It just is not a necessary feature, they already have really low CS. Personally, I would also like to try beginning the game with a warrior and a pathfinder. In vanilla most people agree you should build scout first, but in VP most people do monument or shrine (the photojournal section serves as evidence). Especially if you play without ruins.

PS- everyone I have shown VP to has found starting with an old Shoshone pathfinder confusing. It is only used because we needed the art, right? I think swapping it with the scout would be a good move.

I'd say the normal initial build order is shrine-monument-warrior-worker(likely bought). I've found that I can typically scout with the initial pathfinder until ~T10 and then I bring him home to defend against barbarians until the warrior gets out.

The pathfinder on defense can sometimes be positioned such that the barbarian attacks him instead of moving next to the city and a pathfinder defending can usually hold his own. Once the initial warrior is out I find that my barbarian issues are usually solved. There are some games where none of the above is enough, though. Probably something like 1/10 games the barbs are just going nuts due to CS/AI location.

There are definitely times when my initial pathfinder gets trapped, too. I don't "save scum" often but losing my initial pathfinder in the very early game is one situation where I'll reload the previous turn. It's just too big of a loss that early and can happen even when you're being pretty careful (especially against barbs with movement promotions).

Giving the pathfinder line a "+X% defense against barbarians" innate promotion would help. You could keep it only on defense so that pathfinders don't become too useful with clearing camps if that's a concern.

Giving the player a starting warrior would probably even out the 1/10 situation where barbs go nuts on your capital but might make the 9/10 games too easy possibly? I'd personally be fine with it though- having 2 units to play with early game would be more fun anyway.

I like the idea of barbarians not looting a city if there is a garrison, too. In dire situations you could park your pathfinder or warrior in your city and ride it out without getting destroyed by the lost yields. It makes realism sense to me too.

It's a tough situation overall though. Sometimes barbarians are of zero consequence because there's nearby CS or AIs. Other times they can set you back hugely. Hard to balance around such divergent situations in the very early game where the player's ability to respond is quite limited.

 

[Stalker0]

Well you shouldn't be trying to kill them with Tercios

Oh, that guy does ancient war reenactments

 

[crdvis16]

Diplo AI aggression has been reduced for the upcoming version, never fear.

Do you think the changes might address the fact that the human player seems to be a target more often? There's probably a lot more to it but I usually assume I get ganged up on most especially because my unit cap is often much lower than the AI. I'm basically at my cap for most of the game but still usually last in military score unless I'm playing a warmonger game.

I wonder if that plays into Stalker's game. He got ganged up on when he was the leader but when an AI takes the lead they get DPs. Getting a DP, as I understand it, requires a strong military and positive diplomacy. I assume Stalker was trying to maintain good diplomacy with at least some of the AI that turned on him but I wonder if his military was behind even if he was at his unit cap with a relatively modern force.

I'm experiencing something similar in my game in the Industrial era. I made concerted efforts to be friendly with Indonesia and Rome on my continent (gifts, trade, gave both my religion when they didn't found, DoF with both, denounced their enemies, joined them in war against our enemies on the continent). I pulled ahead in tech/policies and became a target of the rest of the world and probably rightly so. However, I never got DPs with Rome/Indonesia likely because, despite being at my unit cap and having advanced units, my military score was still 7th or 8th. Eventually they both also turned on me despite all of our positive modifiers.

I'm no longer ahead in score. I'm about even with 3 or 4 other civs in terms of policies/techs. The other civs typically have DPs even if they are leading. I think I'm currently at war with 6/7 of the AI and none of them are at war with each other right now. I haven't taken any cities or antagonized (other than antagonizing Portugal/Germany to ingratiate myself with Rome/Indonesia). The one lever I can't really address is my military score due to my unit cap.

My unit cap is sufficient for me to defend myself even when much lower than the AIs. However, the AI doesn't seem to know that and sees me as weak which makes diplomacy sorta moot.

 

[Recursive]

Do you think the changes might address the fact that the human player seems to be a target more often? There's probably a lot more to it but I usually assume I get ganged up on most especially because my unit cap is often much lower than the AI. I'm basically at my cap for most of the game but still usually last in military score unless I'm playing a warmonger game.

I wonder if that plays into Stalker's game. He got ganged up on when he was the leader but when an AI takes the lead they get DPs. Getting a DP, as I understand it, requires a strong military and positive diplomacy. I assume Stalker was trying to maintain good diplomacy with at least some of the AI that turned on him but I wonder if his military was behind even if he was at his unit cap with a relatively modern force.

I'm experiencing something similar in my game in the Industrial era. I made concerted efforts to be friendly with Indonesia and Rome on my continent (gifts, trade, gave both my religion when they didn't found, DoF with both, denounced their enemies, joined them in war against our enemies on the continent). I pulled ahead in tech/policies and became a target of the rest of the world and probably rightly so. However, I never got DPs with Rome/Indonesia likely because, despite being at my unit cap and having advanced units, my military score was still 7th or 8th. Eventually they both also turned on me despite all of our positive modifiers.

I'm no longer ahead in score. I'm about even with 3 or 4 other civs in terms of policies/techs. The other civs typically have DPs even if they are leading. I think I'm currently at war with 6/7 of the AI and none of them are at war with each other right now. I haven't taken any cities or antagonized (other than antagonizing Portugal/Germany to ingratiate myself with Rome/Indonesia). The one lever I can't really address is my military score due to my unit cap.

My unit cap is sufficient for me to defend myself even when much lower than the AIs. However, the AI doesn't seem to know that and sees me as weak which makes diplomacy sorta moot.

There should be some improvement in this respect, yes. G made the adjustment since I wasn't here, so I'm not sure of the precise changes, but the AI will be less war-hungry, and I expect their "shark smelling blood" instinct has been toned down as well.

 

[pineappledan]

The warrior did stop a few raids, but I would need at least 3 units to stop them entirely, which isn't reasonable. This is going to get even harder if archers have one range.

I don't think there is a single thing either of us should have done differently in these games. It happens to me most often when I already started on tundra, like come on man. It feels so bad to experience this. After spending all that time setting up Civ and getting my friend to try the mod, we just decided to play another game.

We have this thing were barbs just avoid for territory for X turns, depending on difficulty. Frankly that isn't a solution. It was added to address these complaints, but it doesn't. Along with no 2 range for cities, they are really hard to deal with early game, the 1/10 games you get swarmed.

Can we please take away the barbarian penalty on pathfinders and scouts? It just is not a necessary feature, they already have really low CS. Personally, I would also like to try beginning the game with a warrior and a pathfinder. In vanilla most people agree you should build scout first, but in VP most people do monument or shrine (the photojournal section serves as evidence). Especially if you play without ruins.

Yet another reason I don't want warriors upped to 8CS. Humans might not build a lot of them but the barbs build tons of them, and they can already force rerolls at 7.

 

[civplayer33]

Isn't the Barbarian Brute a different unit?

 

[pineappledan]

Yes, but I expect they will get the CS change as well. Maybe I am wrong

 

[bigcat88]

@Stalker0
What CPU u have? Seeing screens on github, so big map and Information Era. How long it takes AI process turn?

 

[CrazyG]

My games are exactly like Stalker's, I just get dogpiled. The most extreme example I can find is Byz lost her capital to the Iroquois. She then proposed sanctioning ME, not him.

So far my personal record is the 4th congress before getting sanctioned. I really thought that game could go till the 5th, given that I never declared war, conquered cities, I didn't even get a religion, but alas, "my behavior infuriates them".

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Yeah, the logical explanation would be that the human has a lower military score, and that makes diplomacy impossible. That doesn't necessarily explain why all this happens all of a sudden around the industrial era though? I mean I am usually even worse miltarily (is that a word?) early on in the game (I like playing greedy and focus on booming economically first and then build a decent fleet/army later on) yet they never declare on me then.

Just lowering the agression in general isn't necessarily a good change in itself, we don't want warmonger civs that play peaceful games even though their neighbors are weak etc.

All of this is kind of strange.

 

[Gazebo]

Let's talk about barbarians.

Just tried a two player game, on turn 3, he moved his pathfinder onto a hill. There are two barbarians on the other side, the pathfinder dies. That is such a huge loss, it seriously just cripples his entire game. I collected like 10 ruins while he got none, and I'm two social policies ahead by turn 60. I agreed we could just restart, because his early game not only is difficulty, it is unfun.

On the restart, I'm annoyed because I went from great land to tundra, but hey, I still think its the right decision. I lose about 90 food by getting raided by barbarians within 20 turns, on an already low food start. Now CrazyG, were you being greedy? Why didn't you build a military unit?

Well, I did! I had already bought a warrior, the barbs just run past him to annoy the city. They also terrorize it, so I get that archer later. I lose some culture too. Which is great, that way even if I wanted to take authority, the barbs would all be dead by the time I got culture for kills. The warrior did stop a few raids, but I would need at least 3 units to stop them entirely, which isn't reasonable. This is going to get even harder if archers have one range.

I don't think there is a single thing either of us should have done differently in these games. It happens to me most often when I already started on tundra, like come on man. It feels so bad to experience this. After spending all that time setting up Civ and getting my friend to try the mod, we just decided to play another game.

We have this thing were barbs just avoid for territory for X turns, depending on difficulty. Frankly that isn't a solution. It was added to address these complaints, but it doesn't. Along with no 2 range for cities, they are really hard to deal with early game, the 1/10 games you get swarmed.

Can we please take away the barbarian penalty on pathfinders and scouts? It just is not a necessary feature, they already have really low CS. Personally, I would also like to try beginning the game with a warrior and a pathfinder. In vanilla most people agree you should build scout first, but in VP most people do monument or shrine (the photojournal section serves as evidence). Especially if you play without ruins.

PS- everyone I have shown VP to has found starting with an old Shoshone pathfinder confusing. It is only used because we needed the art, right? I think swapping it with the scout would be a good move.

I'm fine with trying it.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Sigh, Xcoms might need a bit of a nerf with their new tech position, or maybe a prod cost increase or something. England is literally making these guys faster than I can kill them....and they aren't all that squishy.

View attachment 545481


If the AI has more Xcoms than my entire supply....is that time to throw in the towel?

Holy .... what difficulty is this ? I have never seen an AI reach the XCOMs in Emperor and my few games in immortal were over way before that...