New Beta Version - August 16th (8/16)

[2506]

I understand your concerns (note that I didn't delete the code for the 10-turn lag, I just commented it out). The tradeoff is that while preparation time is less certain, you're guaranteed to have an ally who goes to war with you, whereas with the old system, the AI would not prepare a sneak attack operation to invade their enemy, often leaving you alone. And if one of you, say, gets caught and the AI demands you move your troops or the other player declares war on you, your ally will go to war with you immediately rather than just leaving you to the wolves. It's essentially an "Offensive Pact", and with the changes I've made the AI should be utilizing it more effectively as well.

The intention is that you will still have the 10 turns of preparation, and I'm looking at modifying the code so that the AI will not declare war before the 10 turns are up. But if war happens before then, the exploits and issues associated with the asynchronous war state won't happen. I feel a firm commitment to declaring war, which could allow for alliances of > 2 people or coop war VS coop war situations (which to me sound interesting), is worth the tradeoff of removing the guaranteed 10-turn delay, and the risk makes it interesting because all of the choices are meaningful and you have to weigh them carefully.

Remember that not agreeing to declare war is a valid option, and while the AI will be upset, they won't be nearly as upset as if you back out of a war agreement. If it's really unpopular the change can be reverted (I kept the "coop war time" statement code), but it helps the AI a lot, eliminates exploits (like the war weariness issue) and I think it'll be appreciated. We'll see.

Edit: Keep in mind that all you're committing to doing is declaring war. If war happens before the 10 turns end, having a bunch of troops there isn't required. Although making an Offensive Pact against your neighbor carries obvious risk factors.

Most of my issues are negated by the sentence I've bolded . Now the instigator loses his option to jump in early, but gains a guaranteed ally. And the second party will have time to get ready in most circumstances.

Even if you don't manage to hard-code a 10-turn wait for both parties, if that's the intent, the other benefits make the changes worth it, in my opinion.

Thanks for the very helpful, comprehensive response.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Can we prevent puppets from working specialist slots? I don't think getting more unhappiness from a city that's producing 20% of it's yields is a good idea.

I feel with you. Unhappiness from urbanization on top of the unhappiness from beeing a puppet is such an annoyance.
One full unhappiness for getting 20% yields of a specialist, which eats more food and dont generate any GPP is really a bad trade.
Even worse, that additional unhappiness reduces the growth even more, this is my biggest problem with the local unhappiness system and puppets. Thats also the reason why I like Ghandi as warmonger, his growth bonus from the UA is able to negate the growth penalty from unhappiness.

In my eyes, it would be best to give puppets only the unhappiness by population and ignore all other sources of unhappiness.

 

[Recursive]

I feel with you. Unhappiness from urbanization on top of the unhappiness from beeing a puppet is such an annoyance.
One full unhappiness for getting 20% yields of a specialist, which eats more food and dont generate any GPP is really a bad trade.
Even worse, that additional unhappiness reduces the growth even more, this is my biggest problem with the local unhappiness system and puppets. Thats also the reason why I like Ghandi as warmonger, his growth bonus from the UA is able to negate the growth penalty from unhappiness.

In my eyes, it would be best to give puppets only the unhappiness by population and ignore all other sources of unhappiness.

I agree with this, if puppets don't produce GPP they shouldn't produce Urbanization either.

 

[Gazebo]

I agree with this, if puppets don't produce GPP they shouldn't produce Urbanization either.

i disagree. There should be a trade off keeping a city as a growing puppet for a long time.

 

[Recursive]

i disagree. There should be a trade off keeping a city as a growing puppet for a long time.

Unhappiness from specialist assignments that the player has no control over doesn't have good mouthfeel.

I agree there should be a tradeoff, but I think there's a better way of accomplishing it - like not allowing them to work specialist slots in the first place, plus or minus some other things.

Edit: Plus, Urbanization is not capped by population.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Halfway through a new game playing as The Celts, Epic speed, Small size, Emperor, 12 CS, 6 civs, Ruins and events on .... not sure if i'm going to complete this till the end or not but it's been interesting and competitive till a point when thing just got out of control.
5 out of 5 AIs grabbed tradition including the Aztecs.
Started as a nice wide progress game with Rhiannon the sovereign pantheon, got an early religion with hero worship & orders then slowed a bit on enhancing due how the Celtic UA works ... grabbed Petra on my 3rd city that was very heavy on production and a couple of desert tiles ,Statue of Zeus and Terracotta and called it a day on wonders.
Went Fealty then enhanced with Mosques and Mendicancy then reformed later with divine teaching.
around late classical/early medieval i beelined Physics l i Conquered my Immediate neighbor's capital, Portugal for a nice tradition city using heavy skirmishers and left them for good.
Did the same to Egypt but could not completely get rid of them until early renaissance and this is when things stared to get out of hand.
Everybody(Tradition Maya, a funny Tradition Aztecs and tradition Germany) started to hate on me with DPs and joint wars -shocker right?- fending them off was not an issue at all; in fact i could have conquered them with my larger army despite being slightly behind in tech if it were not for the geographic barrier (the Aztecs behind a chain of mountains and hills making no practical way to get there without a huge navy which i cannot afford, the Mayan lands is full of Amazon-like rivers making infantry/cavalry push and retreat tactics undoable).
Happiness due to needs skyrocketed for some reason putting all of my cities at an effective growth of 0 and making my wars even harder, tried building pretty much every single building that reduced unhappiness, halting growth at all in all cities, and building multiple projects that reduce needs and produce happiness but it was no use ... i got stuck in an endless loop of unhappiness that spiraled into more unhappiness despite only being one tech and one social policy behind the leader with my cities being much better developed in terms of infrastructure that i got effectively locked at my population in the medieval era for the rest of the game.
I think i stumbled upon what seems to be a bug with public works projects: if you start two projects in two cities simultaneously and one of them finishes before the other instead of increasing the cost of the other one it starts over from the very beginning.

Spoiler Hello unhappiness my old friend :

The AI is indeed objectively and in a very noticeable way much better at using it's units and using them in effective combination, also some neat citadel placement did this to me lol

Spoiler Nice borders extension, Pacal. :

Edit: this is local happiness in one of my earliest founded cities with pretty much all of the relevant buildings built.

Spoiler :

 

[BiteInTheMark]

i disagree. There should be a trade off keeping a city as a growing puppet for a long time.

I thought paying full maintenance for getting only 20% of normal yields, beeing a guaranteed happiness drain, didnt be able to chose production or buy units/buildings/tiles and never get any GPP from it is already a trade off?
Why need more pain?

 

[BiteInTheMark]

The AI is indeed objectively and in a very noticeable way much better at using it's units and using them in effective combination, also some neat citadel placement did this to me lol

Nice, but its still a bit questionable, if placing 2 generals without any protection on an opponents borders might be a good idea. If a war is inevitable with the Maya sooner or later, I would pick sooner and kill those 2 generals with a swift horse attack before they are able to annoy me with citadels stealing my land....

Spoiler This decision of Isabella is questionable too: :

Turn 13 and Isabella didnt have founded their capital and additional, let their settler unprotected...

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

This was right after signing a peace treaty .... you can see some of my army heading north to fight the Aztecs after i got sure i can breathe for a while with the Mayan army not going to DOW me.

Nice, but its still a bit questionable, if placing 2 generals without any protection on an opponents borders might be a good idea. If a war is inevitable with the Maya sooner or later, I would pick sooner and kill those 2 generals with a swift horse attack before they are able to annoy me with citadels stealing my land....

Spoiler This decision of Isabella is questionable too: :

Turn 12 and Isabella didnt have founded their capital and additional, let their settler unprotected....

 

[DeAnno]

There should be a trade off keeping a city as a growing puppet for a long time.

If there's a belief that the unhappiness penalty for puppets isn't large enough it should be addressed by adjusting their 1U/X pop scaler, not a semi-random lottery where the Governor AI drunkenly decides how many useless specialists he's going to build and run as the game goes on.

 

[andersw]

Halfway through a new game playing as The Celts, Epic speed, Small size, Emperor, 12 CS, 6 civs, Ruins and events on .... not sure if i'm going to complete this till the end or not but it's been interesting and competitive till a point when thing just got out of control.
5 out of 5 AIs grabbed tradition including the Aztecs.
Started as a nice wide progress game with Rhiannon the sovereign pantheon, got an early religion with hero worship & orders then slowed a bit on enhancing due how the Celtic UA works ... grabbed Petra on my 3rd city that was very heavy on production and a couple of desert tiles ,Statue of Zeus and Terracotta and called it a day on wonders.
Went Fealty then enhanced with Mosques and Mendicancy then reformed later with divine teaching.
around late classical/early medieval i beelined Physics l i Conquered my Immediate neighbor's capital, Portugal for a nice tradition city using heavy skirmishers and left them for good.
Did the same to Egypt but could not completely get rid of them until early renaissance and this is when things stared to get out of hand.
Everybody(Tradition Maya, a funny Tradition Aztecs and tradition Germany) started to hate on me with DPs and joint wars -shocker right?- fending them off was not an issue at all; in fact i could have conquered them with my larger army despite being slightly behind in tech if it were not for the geographic barrier (the Aztecs behind a chain of mountains and hills making no practical way to get there without a huge navy which i cannot afford, the Mayan lands is full of Amazon-like rivers making infantry/cavalry push and retreat tactics undoable).
Happiness due to needs skyrocketed for some reason putting all of my cities at an effective growth of 0 and making my wars even harder, tried building pretty much every single building that reduced unhappiness, halting growth at all in all cities, and building multiple projects that reduce needs and produce happiness but it was no use ... i got stuck in an endless loop of unhappiness that spiraled into more unhappiness despite only being one tech and one social policy behind the leader with my cities being much better developed in terms of infrastructure that i got effectively locked at my population in the medieval era for the rest of the game.
I think i stumbled upon what seems to be a bug with public works projects: if you start two projects in two cities simultaneously and one of them finishes before the other instead of increasing the cost of the other one it starts over from the very beginning.

Spoiler Hello unhappiness my old friend :

View attachment 567820

The AI is indeed objectively and in a very noticeable way much better at using it's units and using them in effective combination, also some neat citadel placement did this to me lol

Spoiler Nice borders extension, Pacal. :

View attachment 567810View attachment 567823

Edit: this is local happiness in one of my earliest founded cities with pretty much all of the relevant buildings built.

Spoiler :

View attachment 567827

At that tech with that amount of land roughly 40% is to be expected, its when you dip below 30 when it gets stressful.
You need to make a couple of public works in every city and things will smooth out.
Yes this costs a lot or city hammer turns.

 

[Jiggly]

Do Musketmen count as Gunpowder units for Zulu maintenance trait? They are gunpowder but it says Archery?

 

[CrazyG]

Do Musketmen count as Gunpowder units for Zulu maintenance trait? They are gunpowder but it says Archery?

I think that "gunpowder" as a unit class only includes units in the spearmen line, like fusiliers and infantry.

 

[Stalker0]

First time making a Colonist is a while. Is it correct that they don't get Arenas or Unversities for free?

 

[Zanteogo]

i disagree. There should be a trade off keeping a city as a growing puppet for a long time.

I agree with G here. After a certain point as a warmonger you might as well puppet everything you capture because your core cities will be doing all the stuff you need, new full cities will just slow you down.

There needs to be a reason NOT to do this. Options and choices are good.

 

[InkAxis]

I agree with G here. After a certain point as a warmonger you might as well puppet everything you capture because your core cities will be doing all the stuff you need, new full cities will just slow you down.

There needs to be a reason NOT to do this. Options and choices are good.

But the main reason you would puppet a city is not because you already have cities, but because you don't want to make your happiness situation worse. I would make it so that puppets don't work specialist slots as they are fairly useless at that point.

 

[Zanteogo]

But the main reason you would puppet a city is not because you already have cities, but because you don't want to make your happiness situation worse. I would make it so that puppets don't work specialist slots as they are fairly useless at that point.

There has to be a reason not to puppet, or else why have any other option?

Taking on puppets is just a better choice after you pass a certain point in the game and your empire grows to a certain size. If we make them an even better option, we are really just removing choices at this point.

The whole point is that you lack direct control over the city. If the city does dumb things, well.... that's the point.

 

[Stalker0]

So one oddity. Siam picked Freedom first, and then I picked Order. Every other civ choose order along with me...meaning no one is going for autocracy. I checked my influence and its low levels, so its not like I'm cultural dominating anyone. I mean its nice that the whole world just up and agreed to save the worker man, but its weird!

 

[tothePAIN]

i disagree. There should be a trade off keeping a city as a growing puppet for a long time.

This feels terrible and will force razing cities. Can't we just have it so the puppet city won't work any specialists that it doesn't have the happiness for? The trade off for keeping a city as a growing puppet for a long time is that it is a puppet - no control, reduced yields. What everyone else above me said.

 

[ShadedSkies]

This feels terrible and will force razing cities.

You can always annex and starve. Buildings already in place still give all their yields and at 1 pop you only get 1 local unhappiness, as opposed to a useless growing puppet that gives lots of unhappiness, almost no yields, sub-optimal build orders, terrible tile management and requires courthouse investment.