JamesNinelives
Emperor
Interesting. In my games The Maya, Siam, Germany, and Spain tend to do well in general. Also China, Russia, America. I do play on Huge map size though so there is a bit more room to expand than usual.
New Beta Version - April 17th (4-17)
- Thread starter Gazebo
- Start date
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Interesting. In my games The Maya, Siam, Germany, and Spain tend to do well in general. Also China, Russia, America. I do play on Huge map size though so there is a bit more room to expand than usual.
SuperNoobCamper
King
In my experience on standard size maps the performance of leaders that lean on adopting tradition and playing tall like Arabia or The Maya most of the time depend on their neighbors rather than their own performance, if they spawn next to Rome or Carthage they are usually out of the game by medieval era but if they spawn next to Morocco or Byzantium or pretty much any leader that minds it's own business they go on a wonder spamming spree.
Or they go on a wonder fail spree.
Can't agree more. Venice in game is far too impacting on his close neighbours having all the space they want to expand. It would be cool to have a ticking option to remove Venice without using mods.
vyyt
Deity
I used to remove Venice too, but now after the rework, they seem to be doing fine. I am wide player myself, so I haven't played them, but I think they can have 3 owned cities + some puppets now, which be occupy enough territory on most maps.
What's wrong with using mods like RAS to disable Venice, btw?
Alright i managed to win all 4 victories on deity, epic, standard (8 civs 24 CS), 3rd and 4th unique improvement mode, on the latest patch and here are my impressions:
1. Science victory was achieved with England while i was still learning the patch, so it was really messy. Not much to be said about this one, it's pretty straight forward. Easiest win to achieve ATM you can catch up against deity pretty easy even without spies (I won again with Portugal). If you get ahead, AIs start seriously hating you and you will find yourself in a perpetual war against 5 or more AIs so you have to be careful not to stand out. This segment works perfectly IMO.
2. Culture victory was achieved with Brazil. This one was a photo finish. Early game was pretty slow, but midgame I started getting huge and perma GA was established. Techwise I was 1-2 techs behind leader. When I got influential with 5th civ, things got ugly. All out war was declared on me and i lost 2/4 cities and got nuked 3 turns before Project citizen earth was finished. I managed to finish it 2-3 turns before my capital would've been swarmed and taken. Pretty stressful game, felt like I could lose at any moment even though I had military units almost to the supply limit, and fully upgraded all the time. One AI usually military one gets huge in the game, and can overrun you. Culture victory is pretty hard but doable I wouldn't say that it's always achievable like science because sometimes there is a cultural monster AI (ironically in my games that was usually Shaka) which can't be outtourismed.
3. Diplomatic and Domination victory were won in the same game with Mongolia (First I won domination and then reloaded the game before taking the last capital). Domination is by far the hardest, I might add maybe impossible, and definitely the least fun type of game at the moment. I have to admit that I heavily reloaded to achieve this one (at least 50 times), so some might say that I didn't actually achieve it. I have to say that I had trouble winning with Mongolia which IMO is the only possible option for this victory because of +2 movement for skirmishers and their upgrades. I didn't reload to get wonders, lasthit barb camps or things like that, i only reloaded in 2 situations. First was when i missclick (I play civ 5 for a month and a half, so I didn't know much about terrain cost of walking over river etc, or simply when I missclick because wrong unit was selected). The second reason was a real hair puller. Sometimes when I already defeated AIs army and slowly siege their cities from afar (Mongolia UA), AI just blitzkriegs me with some bullfeathers 6-7 units out of nowhere which move at abnormal speed. Their land units move 3-4 tiles in a turn, or their newly created horseman 1 shots my lvl 10 heavy skirmisher. This was super annoying for me and I still don't understand how do their units ignore ZoC or move 3-4 tiles instead of 2. Horseman I understand but still 1 shotting same era or 1 era higher super lvluped unit seems unreal. This was major problem for me and I didn't get any better in dealing with it. Next thing i'd like to comment is the Great wall wonder. It made war against Iroquios super hard, I think it's a little OP or maybe lasts too long. Coastal cities as people already stated are a bit too strong for a land conquest, took me about 50% more time to take them. Arsenals came into the game really fast a were a nightmare to deal with. Lategame with my helicopter gunship I controlled the stalemate against Shaka who had limitless supply of units and when I got to Death robots I just stomped him. I sent spies in every Shaka city to study the AI. Shaka was spawning 10 units every single turn and i was killing 12-14. That lasted for more than 10 turns. In his cities with 600p he was building rocket artillery which costs 2975p in 1 turn. How is that possible? Anyway I have to say that I did not have fun with domination game. Every single war I had to play super safe and I had to kill at least 100-150 enemy units while losing only a few of meat units. I agree with people that siege units definitely need a buff. Taking 6-10 turns early game to take a city after all opponents units are defeated is realistic, but not meaningful in the game. Or at least buff their defense against city attacks, so if we have 2 siege units 1 is healing at the same rate the other one is taking damage. Conclusion is that domination victory is the hardest and the least fun type ATM and I really think it can and should be improved. Diplomatic victory seems easy when you go for it as alternate to domination. As for going straight to DV i don't know how hard it is.
Finally i would like to share my opinion about AI diplomacy.
While I mostly like it some things are extremely frustrating. I just want to say that 90% of it is extremely well coded. My main problem is with negative modifiers stacking. For spying that is fine (although it gets to crazy numbers like -200), but you're competing with same city states modifier is really too much. Sometimes I just want to be friends and not allies and still get -30 modifier, but most of the time I accidentally (or intentionally but for quest reward science or production) finish a CS quest and get threatening messages. Another frustrating thing for me was how aggressive AI settles near human player earlygame, and ofc negative modifier follows. A lot of time they literary settle between 3 of my cities on a land with no resources and 2 turns later they threaten me because i "Take too much of their land". Vassal citadels change is really good, but what about vassals lasthitting and stealing cities in a war. They puppet conquered cities so you can't even demand or buy them. What do you think about enabling conversations early into the war? Maybe even enable so the AI might stop the war for some ridiculous deals. Maybe even do this when they declare war before it's announced to the world. Also can we add option where we ask AI to send his missionaries?
Sorry for the long text, I just wanted to share my experience, if anyone has any questions I will gladly answer. I would like to thank this community for a wonderful patch, and I would really like to hear @Recursive opinion about this post.
Edit: I forgot the mention what I noticed and think it's a bug. After I conquered cities and built yasha court all unhappiness was due to distress and I couldn't change that or reduce it. Is that intentional? At turn 500 I had 1100 unhappiness and 960 was due to distress.
1. Science victory was achieved with England while i was still learning the patch, so it was really messy. Not much to be said about this one, it's pretty straight forward. Easiest win to achieve ATM you can catch up against deity pretty easy even without spies (I won again with Portugal). If you get ahead, AIs start seriously hating you and you will find yourself in a perpetual war against 5 or more AIs so you have to be careful not to stand out. This segment works perfectly IMO.
2. Culture victory was achieved with Brazil. This one was a photo finish. Early game was pretty slow, but midgame I started getting huge and perma GA was established. Techwise I was 1-2 techs behind leader. When I got influential with 5th civ, things got ugly. All out war was declared on me and i lost 2/4 cities and got nuked 3 turns before Project citizen earth was finished. I managed to finish it 2-3 turns before my capital would've been swarmed and taken. Pretty stressful game, felt like I could lose at any moment even though I had military units almost to the supply limit, and fully upgraded all the time. One AI usually military one gets huge in the game, and can overrun you. Culture victory is pretty hard but doable I wouldn't say that it's always achievable like science because sometimes there is a cultural monster AI (ironically in my games that was usually Shaka) which can't be outtourismed.
3. Diplomatic and Domination victory were won in the same game with Mongolia (First I won domination and then reloaded the game before taking the last capital). Domination is by far the hardest, I might add maybe impossible, and definitely the least fun type of game at the moment. I have to admit that I heavily reloaded to achieve this one (at least 50 times), so some might say that I didn't actually achieve it. I have to say that I had trouble winning with Mongolia which IMO is the only possible option for this victory because of +2 movement for skirmishers and their upgrades. I didn't reload to get wonders, lasthit barb camps or things like that, i only reloaded in 2 situations. First was when i missclick (I play civ 5 for a month and a half, so I didn't know much about terrain cost of walking over river etc, or simply when I missclick because wrong unit was selected). The second reason was a real hair puller. Sometimes when I already defeated AIs army and slowly siege their cities from afar (Mongolia UA), AI just blitzkriegs me with some bullfeathers 6-7 units out of nowhere which move at abnormal speed. Their land units move 3-4 tiles in a turn, or their newly created horseman 1 shots my lvl 10 heavy skirmisher. This was super annoying for me and I still don't understand how do their units ignore ZoC or move 3-4 tiles instead of 2. Horseman I understand but still 1 shotting same era or 1 era higher super lvluped unit seems unreal. This was major problem for me and I didn't get any better in dealing with it. Next thing i'd like to comment is the Great wall wonder. It made war against Iroquios super hard, I think it's a little OP or maybe lasts too long. Coastal cities as people already stated are a bit too strong for a land conquest, took me about 50% more time to take them. Arsenals came into the game really fast a were a nightmare to deal with. Lategame with my helicopter gunship I controlled the stalemate against Shaka who had limitless supply of units and when I got to Death robots I just stomped him. I sent spies in every Shaka city to study the AI. Shaka was spawning 10 units every single turn and i was killing 12-14. That lasted for more than 10 turns. In his cities with 600p he was building rocket artillery which costs 2975p in 1 turn. How is that possible? Anyway I have to say that I did not have fun with domination game. Every single war I had to play super safe and I had to kill at least 100-150 enemy units while losing only a few of meat units. I agree with people that siege units definitely need a buff. Taking 6-10 turns early game to take a city after all opponents units are defeated is realistic, but not meaningful in the game. Or at least buff their defense against city attacks, so if we have 2 siege units 1 is healing at the same rate the other one is taking damage. Conclusion is that domination victory is the hardest and the least fun type ATM and I really think it can and should be improved. Diplomatic victory seems easy when you go for it as alternate to domination. As for going straight to DV i don't know how hard it is.
Finally i would like to share my opinion about AI diplomacy.
While I mostly like it some things are extremely frustrating. I just want to say that 90% of it is extremely well coded. My main problem is with negative modifiers stacking. For spying that is fine (although it gets to crazy numbers like -200), but you're competing with same city states modifier is really too much. Sometimes I just want to be friends and not allies and still get -30 modifier, but most of the time I accidentally (or intentionally but for quest reward science or production) finish a CS quest and get threatening messages. Another frustrating thing for me was how aggressive AI settles near human player earlygame, and ofc negative modifier follows. A lot of time they literary settle between 3 of my cities on a land with no resources and 2 turns later they threaten me because i "Take too much of their land". Vassal citadels change is really good, but what about vassals lasthitting and stealing cities in a war. They puppet conquered cities so you can't even demand or buy them. What do you think about enabling conversations early into the war? Maybe even enable so the AI might stop the war for some ridiculous deals. Maybe even do this when they declare war before it's announced to the world. Also can we add option where we ask AI to send his missionaries?
Sorry for the long text, I just wanted to share my experience, if anyone has any questions I will gladly answer. I would like to thank this community for a wonderful patch, and I would really like to hear @Recursive opinion about this post.
Edit: I forgot the mention what I noticed and think it's a bug. After I conquered cities and built yasha court all unhappiness was due to distress and I couldn't change that or reduce it. Is that intentional? At turn 500 I had 1100 unhappiness and 960 was due to distress.
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Nothing in particular but I tend to avoid adding more mods as I see a lot of posts talking about stability issues when playing with mods not included in standard VP setup.
vyyt
Deity
I think RAS is safe. It's the memory-heavy mods adding tons of unit graphics or mods known for conflicting with VP that are risky. Maybe I am just lucky, but I haven't had a CTD with VP for more than a year and I use like 30 or more mods - some even adding new units.
vyyt
Deity
@Susanoo, nice write-up. Regarding the AI units destroying more advanced units of yours, what did the combat preview in the bottom left say? If you war a lot, the enemy units get a % boost. I think it is called resistance or war fervor or something like that, it should be listed in the combat preview among the other % modifies from promotions and terrain, etc. I like long protracted wars, so I modded this penalty out, I find it just annoying when dominating the world - I will rather have AI zerg-rushing me with carpets of doom than making my elite units less effective.
Regarding the enemy units moving faster, it probably stems from their promotions. When you mouse over their banner, you should see how many movement points they have. I also suggest using the Promotion Flags EUI mod - check the stickied Mod compatibility thread for the download link. It will add little icons of promotions above all units (you can mouse over them for tooltips). You will probably find out that these units had an extra movement promotion or the woodsman one making them faster in forests or something like that. AI units do not get any combat or movent bonus (although they get more promotions when born).
Regarding the enemy units moving faster, it probably stems from their promotions. When you mouse over their banner, you should see how many movement points they have. I also suggest using the Promotion Flags EUI mod - check the stickied Mod compatibility thread for the download link. It will add little icons of promotions above all units (you can mouse over them for tooltips). You will probably find out that these units had an extra movement promotion or the woodsman one making them faster in forests or something like that. AI units do not get any combat or movent bonus (although they get more promotions when born).
With 24 CS is there any room to expand? what map type?
(I play with 14 and still use low sea for more room.)
I've read that the CS competition modifier will be tuned down in next patch.
Hard to say, I dont use 3-4unique mod, skirmisher units in rough terrain take extra damage, other than that?
What civ? Iroqois move obscenely fast in forest/jungle and mt kilimanjaro can possibly also cause it, both visible on unit promos.
SuperNoobCamper
King
AI instant bonuses are kinda of cheesy cheating that make for some frustrating moments.
I started a game and abandoned it around turn 150 because of something like this .... Babylon forward settled my capital with a city that only had one land tile, flat grass land with no resources, 4 water tiles with no resources, one fish then bought a whale tile and that's the city .... No god of the sea pantheon, no authority or progress boost to production but out of nowhere it's now a 5 pop city with walls of babylon that produced 2 spears and a triremme managing to outproduce my capital and my 8 pop city combined.
This is Emperor btw not Deity.
I started a game and abandoned it around turn 150 because of something like this .... Babylon forward settled my capital with a city that only had one land tile, flat grass land with no resources, 4 water tiles with no resources, one fish then bought a whale tile and that's the city .... No god of the sea pantheon, no authority or progress boost to production but out of nowhere it's now a 5 pop city with walls of babylon that produced 2 spears and a triremme managing to outproduce my capital and my 8 pop city combined.
This is Emperor btw not Deity.
@vyyt It's called anti-warmonger fervour I think, and yes they had massive bonus from that around 70%. As for the mod i was wondering about that myself. IMO it should be added to the official patch since it's really hard to see opponents promotions. Thanks for mentioning that, I didn't know it existed.
@andersw I played different map types: small islands, large islands, continents, pangea. For example last game had 77 cities. Yes I played vs iroquois, and yes I know about their UA, but my question is how do you play against that, when their newly spawned units have combat strength of your lvl 10 skirmisher? And if you lose 1-2 super upgraded units, the domination game is just over.
@andersw I played different map types: small islands, large islands, continents, pangea. For example last game had 77 cities. Yes I played vs iroquois, and yes I know about their UA, but my question is how do you play against that, when their newly spawned units have combat strength of your lvl 10 skirmisher? And if you lose 1-2 super upgraded units, the domination game is just over.
I won a deity domination game as Spain, so it's not possible with just Mongolia.
The challenge on deity is dealing with the +75% antiwarmonger bonus, which means focus firing enemy units through upgraded units that have range and logistics is a must.
The current patch, with the xp bug, actually made this easier in many ways.
The challenge on deity is dealing with the +75% antiwarmonger bonus, which means focus firing enemy units through upgraded units that have range and logistics is a must.
The current patch, with the xp bug, actually made this easier in many ways.
Well you're the Diety player not me, but its like with the Inca, its hard to fight in territory they benefit a lot from.
On emperor I can deal with it, basically wall off with tanky units on fortify and have +range stuff firing from behind, preferrably also with indirect fire, skirmishers are not very good in this case.
Or open a gap, let skirmishers do their job and close the gap.
Apart from AI producing more you get more antiwarmongering so already slow wars is a lot slower on diety.
Legen
Emperor
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2015
- Messages
- 1,500
I remember that mod being mentioned to be heavy on memory, which was an issue i had before with CTD. It is a mod that I love, but avoid to use due to that.
vyyt
Deity
The original one was, but the newer one linked in the stickied Mod compatibility thread is optimized. I haven't heard any complaints about it, give it a try.
I'll see what I can remember off the top of my head, I won't detail too much of the diplomacy, but here's a run-down of my last game (v.4/17) displayed with some screens:
Standard / Continents++ / King / Authority/Fealty/Imperialism/Autocracy
Domination victory turn 371
No impactful game changing mods, with the exception of 3/4 UC
Founded last with Festivals: Orders/Scholarship/Inquisition/Way of Transcendence/Crusader Spirit
My settling phase was straight forward, but I did notice the hit from less barbs due to CS while going Authority. I declared on Inca after he settled in the heart of my land, but his Slingers were formidable alongside mountainous terrain near Antium - he held onto his city and overtook mine, to my surprise. It didn't last long; once I had my Legion and Ballista online I proceeded to wipe Pacha out and claim all the land to my south without worry. The XP bug would ensure I had lots of fighting to come while making this dom victory easier than normal.
With the help of neighboring Hong Kong, Tikal was mine and granted me prime position to finally push into Mayan land... Except the bugger established a defensive pact with not only Brazil and Portugal, but also France (authority), whom I had to be cautious of and had planned to deal with separately; I was sanctioned (essentially the entire game) after the initial WC so unhappiness was an issue and I had no breathing room to fight on two fronts despite having a fur monopoly and passing Casus Belli.
After having to be patient for quite a few turns while sitting on my advanced forces, France does me a favour by denouncing me, followed by a DoW a turn after I denounce him. Troyes would let me control the channel across to his continent, and he had a few islands to my southeast that were of strategic placement. Gandhi simultaneously vassalized Venice (I've decided that although they are performing better since their rework, Venice is basically still a feeder civ that will probably be disabled in my future games, unless I personally use them) and declared on me within the next 10 turns. I capture the three islands and peace out with France while trying to maintain happiness.
I annexed one of France's Islands and built the Red Fort (I was the only Fealty civ, so I had no worry of losing the wonder) to defend my flank for situations like Venice trying to breach my waters. The wonder allowed me to leave the area unguarded for a few extra turns before having an Ironclad come in to clean up the remaining enemies; You can see the CS/RCS with a stationed field gun while I was 2-hitting frigates and 3-hitting corvettes - it felt good to me.
Fast forward 30 turns and Pacal digs his own grave by Declaring on me alongside Brazil. Hong Kong was now his brief ally, but the AI failed to actually prepare it's borders (along with some other weird behaviour like not putting units in the cities to garrison as well as still leaving GG/GA occasionally exposed), letting me walk in and secure my first vassal after an easy war. More importantly, it gave me a great city (Tulum) on the western end of France's continent to attack from.
After 320 turns, France's land is mine, alongside his crucial gem monopoly that would help financially aid my final push across into hostile lands, beginning with an established beach-head against my closest competitor at Pataliputra. I kept Napoleon alive as he was previously voted head of the WC, and it paid off with his proposal to repeal my sanction (at the cost of Peace Accord passing). Choosing Scholarship wasn't ideal initially, but as the game progressed it allowed me to keep up pace with the other AI who started to accelerate their tech with Rationalism down the stretch. Kudos to the AI for getting the citadel placed as I hesitated to place my own.
Although having superior forces, I had to tread carefully around unhappiness (I ended up fighting off a few barb rebellions), so the conquest of India didn't take priority over the fact Brazil's UU (Prachina) was about to come online and he had most of the wonders, including Himeji / Great Wall gearing him towards a CV. The invasion of Pedro went as planned, catching him off-guard as he foolishly battled Portugal briefly, and that's the only opening I'd need. Once I left him on the brink and he had no choice but to join my cause, I began to pinch India from both sides. In a pure stroke of luck, India willingly released Venice from his confines right before I was to attack, enabling me to only have to capture the Venetian Capital from Gandhi's hands while avoiding a fight with Enrico's fleet. It was inevitable from there; Gandhi tried to put up a fight, but couldn't muster much, meanwhile Portugal (who'd been the only civ to not previously engage me) had no answer for my newly upgraded battleships/destroyers. I refrained from using nukes up until that point, but Lisbon was on the receiving end of my first, and that was it for Maria. Game over! I probably could've been more aggressive and won 30+ turns earlier if I really pushed it, this was only King after all, but I took my time and had fun. 50 cities on the dot, most of them puppets, but I did selectively annex a handful of others for various reasons throughout the course of the game.
Some other general notes: Poverty got really bad mid-game, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it despite having up-to-date infrastructure; I noticed there's not a single building in Industrial that addresses poverty...? I realize I was sanctioned, and the (un)happy actually feels like it's in a good spot lately, but if I hadn't been using the wonderful Casino building mod by @Asterix Rage that was eventually granting me gold +1 happy across my massive empire, I would've probably lost a city or two to revolt considering it almost happened a couple times anyways. Trader Sid's and Empire State Building really helped me out down the stretch financially and with poverty relief.
I took Inquisition, not only to try the new system out, but because it was actually viable for my situation considering I was last to found. I can't comment on the new purging with pop loss/resistance, but I do know it single-handedly kept me outta the red throughout mid-game due to Maya spamming missionaries. Once I captured Tikal and had to endure a lengthy peace period with Pacal, I was within a stones throw of his Capital and was receiving hundreds of gold every other turn as he kept flipping the city. My faith-game in general was bonkers as the game progressed due to all the instant yields from Orders/policies as I swept across the land.
This is the first game where I had to really utilize Public Works. I've built them sporadically in the past, but this game required many cycles of turns where I built them empire wide in order to keep my empire afloat. They seemed to have functioned properly and provided the necessary benefit.
I've had two straight games building the Global War Games, and I like the new Menin Gate, but it's bonuses are pretty trivial for that stage and I didn't really get any use from it. The silver prize of 25% attack bonus is really what carries that proposal IMO, and I timed my final attacks to coincide with selecting the "Total War" tenet which also provided an attack bonus for 50 turns. I'm pretty sure the 25% bonuses stacked, but couldn't tell for sure due to everything basically just showing up as "miscellaneous" throughout end-game battles in the combat preview.
Pentagon still not giving any XP for the two free jet fighters. Also, I noticed with the recent changes to the military aspects of the tree in late game, that the free jet fighters are received way earlier than they normally would be: that's some true air superiority (although I still think fighters in general are not necessarily up to par with bombers despite having different roles)!
Alhambra's Jinete promo needs to be applied empire wide IMO, considering it's a finisher and is lost on upgrade; It served me nothing really by the time I was able to secure it from France. On this same note, I think Sankore is now slightly underwhelming compared to it's counterparts. A tiny buff would probably do it no harm.
Please for the love of god, drop the GG on Brandenburg and give it a free Military Academy. I know I was playing a domination Rome game, but I legitimately had so many GG's 300 turns in that I was losing track of them all. Also, I still think supply should be shifted slightly; I was approaching like 300 supply by the end while barely being able to keep up production to consume even half of that number, yet tall empires still have to decide whether to even field a navy most games due to lack of supply. I know it's the contrasting nature between the two styles of wide and 40+ cities vs tall and 5 cities, but it just felt crazy seeing the huge discrepancy in size of military that you can achieve.
City strength actually felt okay to me for the most part, but I'll definitely agree that having Vanguard + is OP, depending on if naval melee keep their inherent naval siege bonus, then I can see a case for just consolidating all the city attack stuff into a single promo that's less obtrusive. I purposefully went Bombardment line on all my ranged naval, and it feels like it's in a good spot comparatively.
I find bullying and tribute is inconsequential as the game progresses, and it probably should get a buff.
Guided Missiles were only damaging the garrison and not the city itself. Pretty sure that's not intended?
Despite it being a very obvious choice for Autocracy, I had a really hard time turning down Order. On paper, Order seems almost as justifiable a choice for a lot of different avenues to success. Some of the tenets for Autocracy seem kind of redundant/not entirely applicable, but I realize there's only so much you can create that falls under the main premise of "git gud at killing more". Still, once I got rolling with Autocracy the sheer force at your disposal is definitely tangible; by end-game I was pumping out units at 100+ XP (air units were getting 120!)! I think I just need some more experience using the different aspects of the ideology in varying situations, seeing as I'm accustomed to picking Order/Freedom, before I can really gauge it comparatively.
Standard / Continents++ / King / Authority/Fealty/Imperialism/Autocracy
Domination victory turn 371
No impactful game changing mods, with the exception of 3/4 UC
Founded last with Festivals: Orders/Scholarship/Inquisition/Way of Transcendence/Crusader Spirit
My settling phase was straight forward, but I did notice the hit from less barbs due to CS while going Authority. I declared on Inca after he settled in the heart of my land, but his Slingers were formidable alongside mountainous terrain near Antium - he held onto his city and overtook mine, to my surprise. It didn't last long; once I had my Legion and Ballista online I proceeded to wipe Pacha out and claim all the land to my south without worry. The XP bug would ensure I had lots of fighting to come while making this dom victory easier than normal.
Spoiler :
With the help of neighboring Hong Kong, Tikal was mine and granted me prime position to finally push into Mayan land... Except the bugger established a defensive pact with not only Brazil and Portugal, but also France (authority), whom I had to be cautious of and had planned to deal with separately; I was sanctioned (essentially the entire game) after the initial WC so unhappiness was an issue and I had no breathing room to fight on two fronts despite having a fur monopoly and passing Casus Belli.
Spoiler :
After having to be patient for quite a few turns while sitting on my advanced forces, France does me a favour by denouncing me, followed by a DoW a turn after I denounce him. Troyes would let me control the channel across to his continent, and he had a few islands to my southeast that were of strategic placement. Gandhi simultaneously vassalized Venice (I've decided that although they are performing better since their rework, Venice is basically still a feeder civ that will probably be disabled in my future games, unless I personally use them) and declared on me within the next 10 turns. I capture the three islands and peace out with France while trying to maintain happiness.
Spoiler :
I annexed one of France's Islands and built the Red Fort (I was the only Fealty civ, so I had no worry of losing the wonder) to defend my flank for situations like Venice trying to breach my waters. The wonder allowed me to leave the area unguarded for a few extra turns before having an Ironclad come in to clean up the remaining enemies; You can see the CS/RCS with a stationed field gun while I was 2-hitting frigates and 3-hitting corvettes - it felt good to me.
Spoiler :
Fast forward 30 turns and Pacal digs his own grave by Declaring on me alongside Brazil. Hong Kong was now his brief ally, but the AI failed to actually prepare it's borders (along with some other weird behaviour like not putting units in the cities to garrison as well as still leaving GG/GA occasionally exposed), letting me walk in and secure my first vassal after an easy war. More importantly, it gave me a great city (Tulum) on the western end of France's continent to attack from.
Spoiler :
Spoiler :
After 320 turns, France's land is mine, alongside his crucial gem monopoly that would help financially aid my final push across into hostile lands, beginning with an established beach-head against my closest competitor at Pataliputra. I kept Napoleon alive as he was previously voted head of the WC, and it paid off with his proposal to repeal my sanction (at the cost of Peace Accord passing). Choosing Scholarship wasn't ideal initially, but as the game progressed it allowed me to keep up pace with the other AI who started to accelerate their tech with Rationalism down the stretch. Kudos to the AI for getting the citadel placed as I hesitated to place my own.
Spoiler :
Although having superior forces, I had to tread carefully around unhappiness (I ended up fighting off a few barb rebellions), so the conquest of India didn't take priority over the fact Brazil's UU (Prachina) was about to come online and he had most of the wonders, including Himeji / Great Wall gearing him towards a CV. The invasion of Pedro went as planned, catching him off-guard as he foolishly battled Portugal briefly, and that's the only opening I'd need. Once I left him on the brink and he had no choice but to join my cause, I began to pinch India from both sides. In a pure stroke of luck, India willingly released Venice from his confines right before I was to attack, enabling me to only have to capture the Venetian Capital from Gandhi's hands while avoiding a fight with Enrico's fleet. It was inevitable from there; Gandhi tried to put up a fight, but couldn't muster much, meanwhile Portugal (who'd been the only civ to not previously engage me) had no answer for my newly upgraded battleships/destroyers. I refrained from using nukes up until that point, but Lisbon was on the receiving end of my first, and that was it for Maria. Game over! I probably could've been more aggressive and won 30+ turns earlier if I really pushed it, this was only King after all, but I took my time and had fun. 50 cities on the dot, most of them puppets, but I did selectively annex a handful of others for various reasons throughout the course of the game.
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Some other general notes: Poverty got really bad mid-game, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it despite having up-to-date infrastructure; I noticed there's not a single building in Industrial that addresses poverty...? I realize I was sanctioned, and the (un)happy actually feels like it's in a good spot lately, but if I hadn't been using the wonderful Casino building mod by @Asterix Rage that was eventually granting me gold +1 happy across my massive empire, I would've probably lost a city or two to revolt considering it almost happened a couple times anyways. Trader Sid's and Empire State Building really helped me out down the stretch financially and with poverty relief.
I took Inquisition, not only to try the new system out, but because it was actually viable for my situation considering I was last to found. I can't comment on the new purging with pop loss/resistance, but I do know it single-handedly kept me outta the red throughout mid-game due to Maya spamming missionaries. Once I captured Tikal and had to endure a lengthy peace period with Pacal, I was within a stones throw of his Capital and was receiving hundreds of gold every other turn as he kept flipping the city. My faith-game in general was bonkers as the game progressed due to all the instant yields from Orders/policies as I swept across the land.
This is the first game where I had to really utilize Public Works. I've built them sporadically in the past, but this game required many cycles of turns where I built them empire wide in order to keep my empire afloat. They seemed to have functioned properly and provided the necessary benefit.
I've had two straight games building the Global War Games, and I like the new Menin Gate, but it's bonuses are pretty trivial for that stage and I didn't really get any use from it. The silver prize of 25% attack bonus is really what carries that proposal IMO, and I timed my final attacks to coincide with selecting the "Total War" tenet which also provided an attack bonus for 50 turns. I'm pretty sure the 25% bonuses stacked, but couldn't tell for sure due to everything basically just showing up as "miscellaneous" throughout end-game battles in the combat preview.
Pentagon still not giving any XP for the two free jet fighters. Also, I noticed with the recent changes to the military aspects of the tree in late game, that the free jet fighters are received way earlier than they normally would be: that's some true air superiority (although I still think fighters in general are not necessarily up to par with bombers despite having different roles)!
Alhambra's Jinete promo needs to be applied empire wide IMO, considering it's a finisher and is lost on upgrade; It served me nothing really by the time I was able to secure it from France. On this same note, I think Sankore is now slightly underwhelming compared to it's counterparts. A tiny buff would probably do it no harm.
Please for the love of god, drop the GG on Brandenburg and give it a free Military Academy. I know I was playing a domination Rome game, but I legitimately had so many GG's 300 turns in that I was losing track of them all. Also, I still think supply should be shifted slightly; I was approaching like 300 supply by the end while barely being able to keep up production to consume even half of that number, yet tall empires still have to decide whether to even field a navy most games due to lack of supply. I know it's the contrasting nature between the two styles of wide and 40+ cities vs tall and 5 cities, but it just felt crazy seeing the huge discrepancy in size of military that you can achieve.
City strength actually felt okay to me for the most part, but I'll definitely agree that having Vanguard + is OP, depending on if naval melee keep their inherent naval siege bonus, then I can see a case for just consolidating all the city attack stuff into a single promo that's less obtrusive. I purposefully went Bombardment line on all my ranged naval, and it feels like it's in a good spot comparatively.
I find bullying and tribute is inconsequential as the game progresses, and it probably should get a buff.
Guided Missiles were only damaging the garrison and not the city itself. Pretty sure that's not intended?
Despite it being a very obvious choice for Autocracy, I had a really hard time turning down Order. On paper, Order seems almost as justifiable a choice for a lot of different avenues to success. Some of the tenets for Autocracy seem kind of redundant/not entirely applicable, but I realize there's only so much you can create that falls under the main premise of "git gud at killing more". Still, once I got rolling with Autocracy the sheer force at your disposal is definitely tangible; by end-game I was pumping out units at 100+ XP (air units were getting 120!)! I think I just need some more experience using the different aspects of the ideology in varying situations, seeing as I'm accustomed to picking Order/Freedom, before I can really gauge it comparatively.
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The excessive City-State competition penalties are a bug that I fixed for the next version. AI was applying a penalty many times when it was intended to be applied a single time, due to a section of code that was placed in a (heh) recursive loop.
Modifiers can get out of control sometimes - this is an issue I'm working on, and it's tied to how poorly memory is handled in the diplo AI, because it's unwieldy to work with. I plan on changing it so that nearly all modifiers are time-based, independent of each other, and scale properly with game speed. Some extra positive mods and value tweaking may also be in order. Stay tuned!
Speaking of memory, territorial aggression also experiences problems - essentially, the AI does not remember that it forward settled, and thus instead of an appropriate response ("hey, I'm the big bully in town, these lands are mine now") you get an inappropriate response ("stop settling near me, you very brave, or very, very foolish expansionist!")
This code has caused headaches for a while. Previously there was a function that compared the centers of each empire's territory in an attempt to detect which player settled closer to the other, but this code caused problems because AI would covet your lands from across the ocean and get angry with you.
ilteroi replaced this a while back with a function that bases it on the number of contested tiles, so at least the AI isn't angry with you over nothing now, but it has trouble with expansion promise logic.
Complicating this, the "don't settle near us" vanilla code was completely busted and nonsensical. This part has been fixed for next version; AI cannot settle within 6 tiles of a city if they promised not to.
Anyway, historical tangent aside, I'm working on fixing the memory-related aspects of the diplo AI, and I'll add this to the list. It's difficult to write this without false positives due to how the code is written and how settling/conquering works (liberating or razing a city counts as gaining and then losing one - and liberation would count as the liberated civ gaining a new city, which makes updating territorial aggression data on city capture/loss a challenge). But I'll see what I can do.
Re: vassals capturing cities, that's frustrating but totally intended. Gaining cities helps them become independent again, after all. You also can't trade damaged cities, to prevent exploits (although trade logic in general could use a lot of improvement).
Allowing trade during war would require major changes to the code. Not currently feasible. As for the AI offering onesided peace deals to end a war early, this is more feasible but still would be a lot of work to implement, balance and guard against exploits (the entire current system is designed around peace deals being proportional to war score) - I'll consider it during my diplo interaction rework in the future.
As for attempted extortion before declaring war, they do this through demands. They only do demands when their approach is HOSTILE, not WAR, however. The mechanic could be reworked to have them demand cities, etc, rather than declaring war, which actually isn't a bad idea and I'll keep it in mind for the future. Sounds like such a demand would need a non-aggression pact mechanic added, though.
Requesting city conversions is probably an unnecessary mechanic - fixing AI city conversion logic is probably a better way to approach the problem. Maybe in the future - it's a lot of work to properly implement new buttons under Discuss (and the mechanic would need new AI logic, text, exploit protection...), and there's a limit on the button count. I hate Lua.
Thanks for your feedback.
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The excessive City-State competition penalties are a bug that I fixed for the next version. AI was applying a penalty many times when it was intended to be applied a single time, due to a section of code that was placed in a (heh) recursive loop.
Modifiers can get out of control sometimes - this is an issue I'm working on, and it's tied to how poorly memory is handled in the diplo AI, because it's unwieldy to work with. I plan on changing it so that nearly all modifiers are time-based, independent of each other, and scale properly with game speed. Some extra positive mods and value tweaking may also be in order. Stay tuned!
Speaking of memory, territorial aggression also experiences problems - essentially, the AI does not remember that it forward settled, and thus instead of an appropriate response ("hey, I'm the big bully in town, these lands are mine now") you get an inappropriate response ("stop settling near me, you very brave, or very, very foolish expansionist!")
This code has caused headaches for a while. Previously there was a function that compared the centers of each empire's territory in an attempt to detect which player settled closer to the other, but this code caused problems because AI would covet your lands from across the ocean and get angry with you.
ilteroi replaced this a while back with a function that bases it on the number of contested tiles, so at least the AI isn't angry with you over nothing now, but it has trouble with expansion promise logic.
Complicating this, the "don't settle near us" vanilla code was completely busted and nonsensical. This part has been fixed for next version; AI cannot settle within 6 tiles of a city if they promised not to.
Anyway, historical tangent aside, I'm working on fixing the memory-related aspects of the diplo AI, and I'll add this to the list. It's difficult to write this without false positives due to how the code is written and how settling/conquering works (liberating or razing a city counts as gaining and then losing one - and liberation would count as the liberated civ gaining a new city, which makes updating territorial aggression data on city capture/loss a challenge). But I'll see what I can do.
Re: vassals capturing cities, that's frustrating but totally intended. Gaining cities helps them become independent again, after all. You also can't trade damaged cities, to prevent exploits (although trade logic in general could use a lot of improvement).
Allowing trade during war would require major changes to the code. Not currently feasible. As for the AI offering onesided peace deals to end a war early, this is more feasible but still would be a lot of work to implement, balance and guard against exploits (the entire current system is designed around peace deals being proportional to war score) - I'll consider it during my diplo interaction rework in the future.
As for attempted extortion before declaring war, they do this through demands. They only do demands when their approach is HOSTILE, not WAR, however. The mechanic could be reworked to have them demand cities, etc, rather than declaring war, which actually isn't a bad idea and I'll keep it in mind for the future. Sounds like such a demand would need a non-aggression pact mechanic added, though.
Requesting city conversions is probably an unnecessary mechanic - fixing AI city conversion logic is probably a better way to approach the problem. Maybe in the future - it's a lot of work to properly implement new buttons under Discuss (and the mechanic would need new AI logic, text, exploit protection...), and there's a limit on the button count. I hate Lua.
Thanks for your feedback.
Thanks for the long answer. I just wanted to share my impressions of the game but ofc mods have the last word.
What about the distress part? After conquering cities and building courthouses, 90% of unhappiness was caused by distress and I couldn't reduce it, nor did it reduce over time. Is that intended to work that way? I was thinking it is because city recently changed owner and that it will reduce after some peace time but it didn't.
It's a volunteer project - I'm a collaborator, not a forum mod. And all feedback is appreciated, don't be shy.
Distress is caused by a lack of Food and Production in your cities relative to global averages. Try increasing those yields in the cities suffering from Distress - you can also build Public Works (unlocked at Machinery) if things are truly out of control.
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