New Beta Version - April 17th (4-17)

[Kim Dong Un]

Additional diplomacy bugfixes for next version:

Bugfixes
- Fixed an issue causing the AI to apply the Opinion penalty for extracting an artifact before an artifact is extracted
- Fixed a potential "DoW on vassal" issue
- Fixed an issue causing potentially massive inflation of diplo penalties for City-State competition (this is probably why AI gets so angry the first time there's competition for a City-State;
thanks to psparky for identifying this bug)

I sent an arch to my newly vassalized neighbour, the Maya, and it wouldn't let me dig in his land until I granted him open borders; I know this is how it works by default (both parties having to share OB before any digging can take place), but IMO you shouldn't have to grant them OB in order to dig when you're their master. I usually grant my vassals OB anyways, but just figure I'd point this out after coming across it recently.

 

[JamesNinelives]

The last few techs are super snowball-ish. It's really easy to just rush through the last part of the tree crazy fast by chaining free great scientists and free techs... Which is an advantage to the human players that can do that way better than the AI. In fact, I was still third in tech right before the Apollo Program. It's not necessarily a bad thing as, though really fun, the late game wars can get tedious with the mounting number of things to manage.

I agree the human is probably better at it, but I've seen AI tech leaders shoot ahead in tech late-game as well so I think it is at least possible for them .

I felt I was given Paratroopers/Special Forces waaaay too often by conscription and city states, would love if it was tweaked to not give them as much.

I recieved a bunch of 'random' units as part of an event and half of them were paratroopers. I think city-states and such will sometimes give you units they think you are 'missing'? I often get siege units from them early on when I don't tend to build them myself. That said, I always have a number of recon units so I'm not sure why they are so popular late-game.

While the early game is not spectacular, the obscene amount of culture from the great writers in the late game basically unlocked every policy I could ever wish for while the tourism from the great musicians should be enough to break any cultural stalemate.

I'm honestly surprised the AI managed to compete with you at all, with such a lead in policies. I thought I had unlocked a lot of policies in my Shoshone days by completing 4 policy trees in addition to my ideology, but I've never had as many as you!

 

[Casworon]

I'm having trouble getting the Aztec 'Golden ages on favorable peace deal' to work.

An AI offered a peace deal where they where giving me gold per turn and upon accepting it i didn't get a golden age. I thought that maybe it would be after the ten turns of peace ends counts it as 'complete' but it didn't activate then.

Then maybe i thought it was because the value of the peace deal was equal, so if they didn't give me gold it would work. But that also didn't activate the golden age.

Am i doing something wrong? What does it mean by a 'favorable peace deal'?

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I'm having trouble getting the Aztec 'Golden ages on favorable peace deal' to work.

An AI offered a peace deal where they where giving me gold per turn and upon accepting it i didn't get a golden age. I thought that maybe it would be after the ten turns of peace ends counts it as 'complete' but it didn't activate then.

Then maybe i thought it was because the value of the peace deal was equal, so if they didn't give me gold it would work. But that also didn't activate the golden age.

Am i doing something wrong? What does it mean by a 'favorable peace deal'?

Need to 'win' a war, so at least 25 war score IIRC; if you peace out with a war score of 10 and receive something trivial like 1 gpt, that's not going to activate it.

 

[Casworon]

Need to 'win' a war, so at least 25 war score IIRC; if you peace out with a war score of 10 and receive something trivial like 1 gpt, that's not going to activate it.

Excellent! Thanks for the explanation. I loaded an auto save and then manually saved it before I accepted the first peace deal so I can load up and give it a test.

I'm loving the civ designs and how they offer interesting play styles. The Aztec warring for golden ages combined with floating gardens food increase meaning you are warring to keep your growth and golden age going rather than on outright conquest is a really cool design.

Edit: Got the golden age with a warscore of 26. Really cool. Maybe this could be added too the civilopedia for complete noobs like me? Also noticed the civilopedia page for the floating gardens says it requires lake. But ingame i can build them in cities next too rivers

 

[Recursive]

Excellent! Thanks for the explanation. I loaded an auto save and then manually saved it before I accepted the first peace deal so I can load up and give it a test.

I'm loving the civ designs and how they offer interesting play styles. The Aztec warring for golden ages combined with floating gardens food increase meaning you are warring to keep your growth and golden age going rather than on outright conquest is a really cool design.

Edit: Got the golden age with a warscore of 26. Really cool. Maybe this could be added too the civilopedia for complete noobs like me?

Could just note in the UA description that you need a warscore above 25.

 

[AndreyK]

When I capture Russian cities (I play as Japan), I am in Industrial, they are in EEra, somehow I get Solar Power. I checked with IGE, they didn't have it before the capture.

 

[Elberith Logos]

This isn't really a bug or balance issue per se... so forgive me for tossing it in here

I believe the AI is too extreme in avoiding settling desert tiles. I'm noticing that AI will literally settle a city on the other side of another empire rather than settling one in a perfectly good desert area with floodplains, oases, resources, etc. Often I'll see them avoid monopolies or natural wonders in order to do this. Prioritization seems way out of whack. Maybe having them prioritize settling luxury resources and natural wonders could at least help a bit? Not sure what the internal logic is here.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

I found AI behaviour that could use a bit of improvement here:

Spoiler :

This is my empire at turn 213. Notice something amiss? Despite there being five religions in the game for quite some time, none of my cities (barring two border cities near Egypt) has any religion. In fact this was the case for another 80 or so turns. I was the only player without a religion in this game (Byzantium got the fifth), and despite having nearly all the religion-focused leaders (Gandhi, Boudicca, Theodora), none of them has bothered so far as to send a missionary to these large, irreligious cities. Instead, Gandhi is more focused on converting Theodora's cities, which already have a religion and which is earning him diplomatic demerits.

This is suboptimal on the part of the AI because spreading your religion to large neutral cities (in particular, being the first one to do so) gives disproportionate benefits, depending on what your founder belief is, and no diplomatic repercussions at all.

 

[vyyt]

It would be nice to have a diplo option to invite foreign missionaries to your lands. You could even pay for it.

 

[azum4roll]

I found AI behaviour that could use a bit of improvement here:

Spoiler :

This is my empire at turn 213. Notice something amiss? Despite there being five religions in the game for quite some time, none of my cities (barring two border cities near Egypt) has any religion. In fact this was the case for another 80 or so turns. I was the only player without a religion in this game (Byzantium got the fifth), and despite having nearly all the religion-focused leaders (Gandhi, Boudicca, Theodora), none of them has bothered so far as to send a missionary to these large, irreligious cities. Instead, Gandhi is more focused on converting Theodora's cities, which already have a religion and which is earning him diplomatic demerits.

This is suboptimal on the part of the AI because spreading your religion to large neutral cities (in particular, being the first one to do so) gives disproportionate benefits, depending on what your founder belief is, and no diplomatic repercussions at all.

Can't blame Gandhi; he can't build missionaries. Quite sure he's just passively converting Byzantine with all that pressure.

 

[Deljade]

It would be nice to have a diplo option to invite foreign missionaries to your lands. You could even pay for it.

I suggested that with a thread a while back. It would make playing without founding more interesting. People said it would be very abusable... I disagree, especially with the proper limitations, the ai would check distance, relation and the religious state of the other civ(much more likely to agree if there is city with pantheon), you can ask this of another ai 50 turns after someone agreed to convert you and they wouldn't even need to waste many missionaries, just one or two to kickstart the conversion for the player to pick up.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I like the idea, but I do think the potential for balance concerns should be taken seriously. If done well it would be cool, but that does take work and I think we're focusing on getting a stable version at the moment. So this may not be an ideal time to ask for it unfortunately. Ideas should always be welcome of course though, and it is a good idea.

 

[Recursive]

Can't blame Gandhi; he can't build missionaries. Quite sure he's just passively converting Byzantine with all that pressure.

If this were the Atomic Era, on the other hand...

 

[Jednooki_John]

Spoiler An example of what i'm talking about... not even ZOC issue, just attacked an no way to retreat and switch due to river blocking the tile. :

View attachment 553673

The skirmisher with low HP used just one movement point to attack and still has three left, the one with full HP has not used any but i cannot get them to swap their places no matter what i do o which one i choose first.

Same problem, very annoying! Has this been addressed by any chance?

 

[Jarru]

When there is barbarian horde attacking SC, AIs tend to start a war against this SC - works as intended?

 

[Recursive]

When there is barbarian horde attacking SC, AIs tend to start a war against this SC - works as intended?

Possibly? AI will tend to pick on weaker targets.

 

[Recursive]

Even further additional diplomacy bugfixes

Resurrecting an AI or liberating their cities now has additional effects on AI behavior
- More likely to liberate your cities if they recapture them from another player
- AIs that have been resurrected by other AIs, if they ever happen to get the opportunity, will return the favor by resurrecting their resurrector
- Liberating the AI's cities blocks them from stealing your land with citadels and blocks Morocco from using their UA to plunder your trade routes

AIs that have agreed to move their troops from your territory will likewise no longer steal territory with citadels or plunder trade routes

Fixed the broken and inefficient Firaxis "don't settle near us" logic, which was causing the AI to ignore its promises not to settle near a player half the time
- Big thanks to ilteroi for fixing this one!
- Todo: Fix "don't settle near us" button so it doesn't take 100 turns to reappear

 

[tothePAIN]

@Recursive

Can we discuss this change: "AIs that have agreed to move their troops from your territory will likewise no longer steal territory with citadels or plunder trade routes"?

Currently, one exploit is to ask an AI to move their troops from your territory immediately after a peace treaty. This effectively makes it so that that AI won't declare war for 20 turns, instead of 10, but the human can declare war after 10. I don't think that the AI should be prevented from establishing citadels after saying they won't declare war - sometimes citadels that take a little territory are still defensive.

 

[Recursive]

@Recursive

Can we discuss this change: "AIs that have agreed to move their troops from your territory will likewise no longer steal territory with citadels or plunder trade routes"?

Currently, one exploit is to ask an AI to move their troops from your territory immediately after a peace treaty. This effectively makes it so that that AI won't declare war for 20 turns, instead of 10, but the human can declare war after 10. I don't think that the AI should be prevented from establishing citadels after saying they won't declare war - sometimes citadels that take a little territory are still defensive.

The AI has three responses for a move troops request:
ACCEPT (we promise not to declare war on you, and we will move our troops from your borders)
NEUTRAL (we promise not to declare war on you, but our troops go where they please)
REFUSE (declare war!)

Only ACCEPT triggers these changes. If the AI hates you or you're weak they're unlikely to give an ACCEPT response. A mere promise not to declare war does not trigger this.

Requests to move troops immediately after a peace treaty probably are exploitable. I'll have to look at fixing.