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

[JamesNinelives]

Just a quick note on something I mentioned earlier: I was seeing the same units being offered by military city-states across a number of games. Playing a game at the moment where that's not the case though, so it seems like it was either a fluke or something that was somehow fixed since .

It already works that way, has for a long time.

Currently being at war/not being at war doesn't affect how fast cities heal though? I think that was the point. If it does work that way already then I guess I learned something new!

 

[Zuizgond]

On the happiness topic, reducing empire size modificator would maybe also help AI build more cities or choose progress. In my 3 recent games I haven't seen an AI building more than 6-7 cities (for non-tradition AI) and max 1 of them (out of 13) went progress.

 

[Voremonger]

I am definitely not a friend of focusing or buffing PW, cause those projects are mainly there for extreme overexpansion and warmongering. Else PW are getting a core element for happiness and I think nobody really wants this.

If you look at the reports, the happiness issues are coming only from wide players, not from tall, so every buff to happiness buildings/PW/policies would buff tradition on the same manner too, which we don't really need.
As already said, the empire modificator is the thing, that hits the wide players only and a first and easy solution would be to reduce it a bit. I think a reduction from 8% to 6% would be a first step.

Other reports are coming from heavy happiness issues from later eras of the game. In my newest game, I was able to rapidly settle 9 cities on a large map, then had to fight permanent revolt risks, which is an acceptable early game limit to a maximum of cities. But this limit shouldn't stay all day long over the whole game. Smoothly decreasing the tech modifier would help fighting the happiness issue in the later game stages.

So:
Decrease Empire Modificator from 8% to 6%.
Decrease tech modifier in total by 10-20%

I think the problem with wide happiness is fundamental in nature and cannot be properly solved by adjusting the parameters a little.
Satisfying needs that are something like 250% of the global median is utterly impossible unless you are lightyears ahead.
Because each City increases needs, there is a limit on how large your empire can become before you hit the 50% / 35% Happiness mark.
I personally hate hard limits on things like empire size and I think the current system gives you a mostly hard limit unless you use weird, unintended strategies.
Public Works can to some degree be used to counteract the increase in needs but even then you have to wait for Factories which I think sucks; having to wait for Buildings that give you Happiness is one of the things that I disliked about Vanilla.
If you were to reduce the needs modifier per City and change nothing else the only effect is that you can build a few more Cities before you hit a wall.
I would like there to be a softer limit for empire size where it's more like climbing a hill; I want building/annexing Cities to always be an option that at least doesn't ruin you.
I've previously proposed some changes to Public Works I think that would work in that direction:

• Change the local Happiness from Public Works to empire-wide Happiness: currently a lot of the Happiness that you get from Public Works simply gets swallowed up by the deficits. If the Happiness was instead empire-wide the benefits you get from Public Works would be much smoother and it would be a better option when you're already in a bad situation in terms of Happiness.

• Change the local Needs reduction of Public Works to a global Needs reduction: with the current system you would need to build some amount of Public Works in every City for each new City that you annex/found. If Public Works were to instead provide a global needs reduction you would only need to build a roughly constant amount of public works for each new City that you annex/found. The cost increase per Public Works built could also be made global.

• To reduce snowballing if any of the above measures are taken: remove the synergy between Factories to reduce the amount of production available for wide strategies. If you have a lot of Cities you already have an advantage in terms of Production because you need to build fewer Units per City.

 

[AndreyK]

Playing the current beta with basic events enabled (not Community Events modmod) up to Renaissance ( I am in late medieval) I don't see any good or neutral events only bad ones - floods, comet (GAP loss) and mine collapses - playing in epic, large. Mine collapses seems far too fluent - I got in 9 city empire about 10 to 14 events.

 

[Voremonger]

Remove the needs modifier increase generated by puppets just like the social policy cost/tourism malus.

The config file found at (2) Community Balance Overhaul/Modular Elements/Happiness Mod/CityHappiness.sql seems to suggest that Puppets are already exempt from the increase to needs:

        -- Per non-puppet city % modifier for unhappiness thresholds (i.e. # cities * value below = % modifier).
        INSERT INTO Defines (
        Name, Value)
        SELECT 'BALANCE_HAPPINESS_EMPIRE_MULTIPLIER', '9'
        WHERE EXISTS (SELECT * FROM COMMUNITY WHERE Type='COMMUNITY_CORE_BALANCE_CITY_HAPPINESS' AND Value= 1 );

 

[Zanteogo]

Playing the current beta with basic events enabled (not Community Events modmod) up to Renaissance ( I am in late medieval) I don't see any good or neutral events only bad ones - floods, comet (GAP loss) and mine collapses - playing in epic, large. Mine collapses seems far too fluent - I got in 9 city empire about 10 to 14 events.

The events, particularly the ones that come without any mod mods, are buggy and repetitive. Noticed the "enable events" isn't checked by default anymore after the last patch, I think maybe this why?

 

[Emperorman1]

What if empire needs modifierworked like this:
When you have only one city, its 0%
When you have 2, its 5% in the first city and 0% in the second.
And if you have 3, its 10% in first, 5% in second and 0% in third.
Model would work maybe a bit better, because older cities tend yo have better infra. Numbers should ofv be adjusted.

 

[Stalker0]

If you look at the reports, the happiness issues are coming only from wide players, not from tall, so every buff to happiness buildings/PW/policies would buff tradition on the same manner too, which we don't really need.
As already said, the empire modificator is the thing, that hits the wide players only and a first and easy solution would be to reduce it a bit. I think a reduction from 8% to 6% would be a first step.

I very much understand the desire to adjust the core mechanic when you feel the system is problematic.

The reason I keep coming back to the PW change, is that an Empire needs adjustment is going to affect everyone, all styles, all builds. I personally have never used PW when going tall, I have plenty of happiness, so why would I waste my hammers. If we lower the empire needs modifier, Tall will still get enough more happiness. Every time we make a change to the whole system we go through a long period of calibration, which is undesirable.

A person who is having severe happiness problems will use PW, so that's the scalpel change. Make the tool better at fixing happiness, and then all styles will be able to compensate for their particular playstyle.

 

[ElliotS]

Exploitable. If a single player is at war, healing is nerfed - you can prevent a player from healing by constantly turning others against them, or just refusing to make peace from far away.

It wouldn't prevent them from healing, just prevent them from healing faster. The exploit would be to keep them at where they are now. That's hardly an issue, considering that getting others to chain-war someone or staying at war yourself isn't free.

I very much understand the desire to adjust the core mechanic when you feel the system is problematic.

The reason I keep coming back to the PW change, is that an Empire needs adjustment is going to affect everyone, all styles, all builds. I personally have never used PW when going tall, I have plenty of happiness, so why would I waste my hammers. If we lower the empire needs modifier, Tall will still get enough more happiness. Every time we make a change to the whole system we go through a long period of calibration, which is undesirable.

A person who is having severe happiness problems will use PW, so that's the scalpel change. Make the tool better at fixing happiness, and then all styles will be able to compensate for their particular playstyle.

I really liked the idea of allowing public works to be global, or at least make the empire needs reduction part global.

As I've played more games this patch I'm also thinking empire needs modifier is too high, and it hits peaceful civs way harder than warmongers (who can puppet to avoid it, and get a policy to boost their puppets to usefulness.)

Allowing you to build public works in your core cities to help reduce needs in newer cities seems like a fantastic part of the solution to the problems with mid-game settling as well.

Plus it's not free. The fact that you do need to dedicate time and gold into public works isn't negligible, especially since their costs scale. Hell, we could make their costs scale globally if we give them global effects. (though I would prefer increasing the per-city scaling and making effects global, to encourage a wider player to spread out the building of them.)

 

[Valvts]

Anyone else experiences insane forgien religious pressure? Rome is closer to Protestanism holy city than mine. Mine is closer to my holy city. I got 3 cities losing religion in one turn. Christianity doesnt have bonuses to pressures apart established reformation, and churches.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I very much understand the desire to adjust the core mechanic when you feel the system is problematic.

The reason I keep coming back to the PW change, is that an Empire needs adjustment is going to affect everyone, all styles, all builds. I personally have never used PW when going tall, I have plenty of happiness, so why would I waste my hammers. If we lower the empire needs modifier, Tall will still get enough more happiness. Every time we make a change to the whole system we go through a long period of calibration, which is undesirable.

A person who is having severe happiness problems will use PW, so that's the scalpel change. Make the tool better at fixing happiness, and then all styles will be able to compensate for their particular playstyle.

I am no friend of the PW. And I greatly dislike making PW to a core element in unhappiness fighting, it should be an emergency button for bad circumstances.
But people report about happiness issues even they have finished every possible building and infrastructure, sometimes even they have stopped growth for their cities.
In my eyes, unhappiness should hit heavy warmongers and people which expand to 10 cities till turn 100, but not someone who has used all possible options (except PW) in their mediocre 8 city empire simply by entering industrial age (you know what I mean).

The empire modificator hits wide harder than tall, so this would be a relatively easy adjustment with a selective result. Even if the result isn't 100% satisfying, the next step to reach the goal wouldn't be as big as it would be now.

Now a question to Gazebo:
Did you notice a greater usage of the PW of the AIs? If even leading AIs, which should have better Yields per population, are using PW, then the happiness issues are coming from the system. If not, then it might be coming partly from better decision making of the AIs. Could you have a look on this maybe?

 

[Gazebo]

I am no friend of the PW. And I greatly dislike making PW to a core element in unhappiness fighting, it should be an emergency button for bad circumstances.
But people report about happiness issues even they have finished every possible building and infrastructure, sometimes even they have stopped growth for their cities.
In my eyes, unhappiness should hit heavy warmongers and people which expand to 10 cities till turn 100, but not someone who has used all possible options (except PW) in their mediocre 8 city empire simply by entering industrial age (you know what I mean).

The empire modificator hits wide harder than tall, so this would be a relatively easy adjustment with a selective result. Even if the result isn't 100% satisfying, the next step to reach the goal wouldn't be as big as it would be now.

Now a question to Gazebo:
Did you notice a greater usage of the PW of the AIs? If even leading AIs, which should have better Yields per population, are using PW, then the happiness issues are coming from the system. If not, then it might be coming partly from better decision making of the AIs. Could you have a look on this maybe?

AIs are not making more PWs than normal, no.

G

 

[ICanHasName?]

Do we know how much of this just relates to difficulty? If we took a turn X player empire from king difficulty and dropped it into an average turn X deity game how much worse would the unhappiness be?

 

[ElliotS]

Do we know how much of this just relates to difficulty? If we took a turn 200 empire from king difficulty and dropped it into an average turn 200 deity game how much worse would the unhappiness be?

Is the player a king player or a Deity player?

Players should be able to get happiness to work on their difficulty. A King-level player playing king should need to work about as hard as a deity-level player on deity.

 

[arthurF]

Is there a counter for PW's ? Like " _3 PW's have been constructed in this city"

 

[Drakle]

I think the problem also has to do with the average yields. It is a mechanic which helps the frontrunner, and further pushes down those at the bottom. I've seen AIs with tiny cities, all game because they get stuck in a permanent rut and so get crippled growth. Meaning they never recover. While, once I or another AI starts running away, the unhappiness starts dropping away, and allows further growth and golden ages.

 

[Jiggly]

Was there a change log somewhere for Vox 9-2? I didn't see a post about it.

 

[Gazebo]

I think the problem also has to do with the average yields. It is a mechanic which helps the frontrunner, and further pushes down those at the bottom. I've seen AIs with tiny cities, all game because they get stuck in a permanent rut and so get crippled growth. Meaning they never recover. While, once I or another AI starts running away, the unhappiness starts dropping away, and allows further growth and golden ages.

We don't use the average, we use a median.

G

 

[JamesNinelives]

Was there a change log somewhere for Vox 9-2? I didn't see a post about it.

You mean this?

New hotfix posted:

Savegame compatible.

- Adjusts Military Base based on @stalker0 suggesstions.
- Fixed 25% for Theodora UA bug
- Fixed missing Minefield yields for Autocracy
- Fixed missing promotion prereqs for Anti-Sub promotion
- Fixed mounted ranged terrain modifiers
- Fixed some pathfinder and path prediction logic
- Adjustments to Builder AI, city building AI, city citizen AI
- Adjustments to Deal AI, including loosening of deals for humans, and fixed trade good expiration bug when out of turn
- Fixed Religion pressure modifier quirk
- Further refinements to tactical AI

https://mega.nz/folder/2Jdw3aQT#Z49gV7KAyMq6YiG5BD9jaA

 

[arthurF]

Ok...latest version is wonky as hell with unhappiness.
Had 40 net happiness one turn with 22 war weariness. Ended war, 2 turns later, 37 net happiness with none of it from war weariness. This is like the bad old days of unhappiness from several patches ago.