New Beta Version - Feb. 9th (2-9)

I'd already mentioned this, but I was pretty disappointed when I couldn't select Denmark for my most recent warmonger game - I don't know who's going to want to play a game with Harald or similar civs who have gimped UU's.

 

I played another game as Montezuma (Immortal, standard speed).
The free (Jaguar) Warrior and the new Tribute mechanics are really helping Montezuma.
If you build a few Jaguar Warriors early on you can easily get the highest Military Power in the game (+50% Tribute rating) and demand ~40 Gold from City States.
I think that the Tribute rating should depend less on Military Power and instead depend more on the amount of military Units near the City State.
The Jaguar Warriors that I upgraded into Spearmen were very strong (I had favorable terrain, mostly Jungle, very few Rivers).

I was able to kill 3 AI before the Medieval Era (Wu Zeitan, Washington, Kamehameha).
I attacked Wu Zeitan shortly after she settled her second City.
At this point I only had Jaguar Warriors with low amounts of experience and the war was pretty tough until I got a Great General and Statue of Zeus.
The war against Washington was somewhat easier, I eventually had 3 Catapults to support the Spearmen.
The war against Kamehameha was easy.
I noticed that Kamehameha was apparently not getting any Anti-Warmonger Fervor, even after I conquered 7 Cities, 2 of which were his (probably a bug?).

I think that the Unhappiness you get from Puppets is currently too low (1/5 of Population, rounded down).
I had 8 Puppets and I only got 4 Unhappiness from them because most of them had less than 5 Population.
Maybe the Unhappiness from Puppets should be rounded up rather than down?

 

I'm glad my changes had some effect, but it seems a balance still needs to be struck on a number of things.

Hopefully the extended logging I'm working on will help discern some problem locations.

 

Keep in mind that puppets contribute to your yields by only 20% of what they produce, both Martial law and exploitation were nerfed this patch too making puppets significantly less useful than before.

 

Just had a game where tradition India went way of the pilgrim and orders for religion

 

This was weird, ver 2.9.4b .
First CS got a citadel in this spot, a citadel that did NOT claim any extra tiles, this was just now swapped for a holy site, which normally would connect resource but I lost the horses.

 

Finally got around to playing this version and... it was fun.

First up, great works work again, and it's great! (I'm sorry) It's so nice to be able to collect art (and get international theming bonuses). Thank you.

Second, I'm really liking the diplo factors on the mouseover for leaders' portraits. Makes a lot more sense now, well done there. I'm also a big fan of getting information from hovering over the crossed swords when you are at war with someone. I don't know if that's new but I've never noticed it before and I like it.

Spoiler War attitude :

Spoiler Clear diplomacy modifiers :

Third, onto the topical subject of the early-game changes. Starting with a warrior makes the very early game significantly more dynamic - which is good! It also makes that starting period go faster... which I have mixed feelings about as it's one of my favourites. In any case there were no huge 'oh no' moments in that regard, so the worst I can say is that it's different. With regards to archers... I built them and hardly used them, because the early game was pretty peaceful for me all told. Didn't have much of an impact on my game, so not much to say except that I support the reduced hammer cost! Thanks for the hotfix, G.

Something else I noticed in how the early game played out (at least in this example) is that barbarians were a lot less relevant. Might have just been a fluke (with try again with the hotfix and report back), but it seemed to be me that they were kind of... tame? I'm a big fan of recon units being less squishy (and it was especially good playing as Shoshone). I can't say exactly what factors are responsible, and to which degree, but I have some ideas.

Starting with a warrior makes the whole early barb threat a lot less worrying. Which is fine, given people seemed to find found the old version annoying. Something I didn't expect is that without 2-range archers barbarians feel a lot less menacing. In particular I found that recon was a lot more straight forward because situations where previously I was outnumbered and had no way of getting out I could just shimmy my way out of the crowd and only a couple of them could hit me. So I may actually be in favour of moving ZOC on the recon tree to Trailblazer III to rebalance things a bit.

Something I did very much appreciate is that embarking your pathfinder or scout and heading out to sea is no longer a game of russian roulette. I think this is in part due to not having to worry about getting sunk by archers you can't see, and part due to barb ships turning up later so you can swim around in peace. The slightly higher CS for early recon units probably didn't hurt either.

I also wonder how the AI are faring in this new meta. Because while barbarians for me were a bit of a non-issue, I still noticed the AI getting a fair bit of stuff pillaged and workers stolen at times. Maybe I just had better luck than them?

The jungle changes weren't as bad as I feared they might be. Still feels like a nerf in the early game for jungle starts, but it's nice being able to consistently get 60 hammers from clearing land once I reach the classical era rather then 12 or 8 or something depending where and what I chop. Pacal didn't seem to care, with his UI and all.

Also, I am now very much a convert to the Goddess of Springtime faith. Didn't give me the immediate faith generation I enjoyed from the Love and Protection pantheons, but it added up pretty well. It's also nice to see the Herbalist as a go-to building, where it's usually been an afterthought for me (except in the UB form of the Iroquois Longhouse). I also have a stronger appreciate for Olives as a luxury than I did before.

As for the rest of the game, after establishing a strong lead early on my neighbours caught up a little but not enough for me to want to play all the way through. They were relatively smart in warfare though. The Huns put together a solid invasion force despite being many tech behind me and they kept me busy for some time. I also declared war on Rome (across the Ditch) in order to get city-state favour. And while they were already at war with Siam at the time and lost a city they managed to defend very solidy. In particular the naval aspect seemed stronger than what I was used to. I peaced out as soon as possible though as I didn't really care about Rome XD.

All in all, I think this beta is pretty good.

 

I could have sworn that this existed in the past but either I was misremembering or it got deleted, so I (re?)implemented it for the January version and fixed some bugs for it for this version; note that it will also display a separate message above those indicators if peace is prevented by some rule (like being bribed to DOW), so you don't actually have to go into the Leaderhead screen at all anymore when at war with someone (unless you want to see their rage face )...there's even a shortcut for peace negotiations (Ctrl + left click) but it seems to tend to bug out the leader animations, at least for me, for the duration of the "negotiations", which I don't think can be fixed...more of a power-player thing for those who have Leaderhead animations disabled anyhow.

 

The warrior was buffed so its now one CS higher than the Brute, this makes the first barb phase very tame and the AI have dealt with barbs very well in my game(s).
As far as AI goes ... hrm, possibly beware of tradition AI (runaway potential), with wars AI's have mostly shot itself in the foot (this on emperor).

 

I am just tired that every Deity game looks like that. And yes, I am about to crush and vassalize Arabia.
And the saddenning part is I had very diffucult start and overextended so I was falling behind. Even without wars with Honor tree I was able to catch up. I captured only two cities and work science specialists in only one city. Game is not challenging enough. I am able to be a leader at war, culture, science, city-states, development. With authority and only one succesful war shouldn't I have mediocre military and falling behind in culture/science to tradition, cs to statecraft, development to progress etc.?????? I haven;t opened Imperialism yet.

 

Just throwing this out there. Something to consider by lowering the Archer range is the Aztecs... Maybe the AI won't notice much but as the Player I think they already completely dominate the Ancient Era. I feel you've made my landslide easier.

 

I was thinking about this today and thought i might borrow old difficulty files from a previous version, o remember the times when Emperor was a significant challenge for me .. now i just get bored mid game in immortal due to lack of competition.

 

I've been finding the game pretty easy unless I really screw up my start. On really high difficulties I think the AI should get their free starting worker returned to them.

 

AI bonuses at deity are about 75% of what they were a year ago, and about half that of vanilla. The AI just doesn’t get all that many bonuses anymore, either early or over time.

 

Maybe this could help them finish improving their tiles before the industrial era

 

I still like the idea of higher bonuses to AI instead of the free worker more, feels more normal and less of the weird worker snatch/pillage harass minigame with your scout.

 

I think that on high difficulties AI should get more bonuses as time goes, not just starting warrior. And more, as time goes, because when you get trough some challenge at the start, in Medieval you start to get over, since even when you try to play peacefully, AI would DoW and lose some cities, after it gets much easier to lead in all aspects.

 

Mean worker

 

The game becomes way too easy. I wrote a topic around year ago about this and it is still becoming easier and easier almost every version. It shouldn't be possible to kill on immortal difficulty 3 AI's before medieval ends on standard speed. Deity now is like emperor 2 - 3 years ago and emperor is like playing without any competition at all. I coming back to game each few or several months (started to play CBP 3 years ago) i never felt that AI is was unbeatable. Too many AI nerfs/changes across the board.

 

That's why I suggested it, I'm seeing tiles go unimproved for a very long time, which really hurts how they can use pantheons and monopolies.

I'd be fine if they got bigger bonuses the rest of the game too. I have to intentionally not get a religion or I just blow out the Deity AI.