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

@HeathcliffWarriors is on the case. He's tweaking AI diplomatic behavior to have more sense, but you know, for every thing you fix, another breaks.

 

I played another game as Boudicca (Deity, standard speed).
I built Pyramids and a few Pictish Warriors and after killing a few Barbarians I used them to conquer Casimir's second City.
Afterwards I walked over to Elizabeth and killed her when she had 2 Cities (she had next to no Units so it took me like 5 turns, lol).
Shortly afterwards Casimir made a very cheeky forward settle so I attacked him again.
Unfortunately at this point Pocatello and Dido decided to DoW me.
While Pocatello made no attempt to actually attack me, Dido simultaneously attacked me by land and by sea.
I had to give up on conquering Casimir's City and focused on defense.
After a long struggle I eventually lost to the combined attacks from Dido and Casimir in the Classical Era.
In retrospect I might have been too greedy: if I had prioritized getting either Mathematics or Iron Working I might have been able to successfully defend myself against Dido's Quinriremes (I think the war would have still been very costly for me).

Regarding difficulty:
I think the AI are at their weakest during the first ~50 turns or so.
If you leave the AI alone for too long their bonuses start to stack up and it becomes much more difficult to take them down.
I think an effective way to make early AI takedowns more difficult would be to give them an instant food yield in their Capital.
Since you now need 4 Population to build Settlers I think this has extended the early period of AI vulnerability.
If the AI were starting with more Population I think the window of opportunity to exploit their early weakness would be much shorter because they would be able to build their first Settlers at an earlier point in time.

I think another factor is that AI players tend to have a higher Military Power rating than human players (simply because they have more units).
So when they are evaluating which other player would be an easy target to attack they have a tendency to underestimate the armies of human players.

You mean (2) Community Balance Overhaul/Balance Changes/Difficulty/DifficultyMod.xml, right?

 

You are 100% correct on this. But this, IMO is the critical element that separates us from the AI and is the reason we eventually win the game. What I mean by this is that we are indescribably more intelligent at maneuvering our military units than the AI could ever hope to be. The way we win the game is by surviving with a small military until we've grown our Empire to the point of churning out a military equal to them. Then we win lol

 

Ah yes, I forgot the supply thing. That could indeed be a significant contributor; what if the AI, in their evaluation of a human's military power, applied a bonus to that evaluation that is equal to the AIUnitSupplyPercent they get for that difficulty? Might just hit the spot...another idea: why not take the free starting Warrior away on Deity (and maybe Immortal, too)? It would slow things down a bit for a human who aims to do early conquest, which is when the AI seems to be particularly vulnerable, even on high difficulties.

 

@Gazebo Man... I would appreciate if any changes to promotion values were listed in op. At least names of ones that were touched. I can check values by myself during Promotion Overhaul for VP update. Looking through 300 promotions each time VP is updated is a horror.

 

Arabia breezed through and vasallized, I am leader in tech, policies, and my armies are wiping everything out but of course all AIs non stop declare that my army is laughing stock of the world (what the hell? it is so ). Deity is definetly too easy, it is a problem with too strong Authority, too strong Fealty with large empires, too strong going wide generally. I am twice as careful with every choice and twice as engaged during late eras as small tradition aiming for culture or science victory. There have been positive changes to diplomacy, I was conciously able to form a firm alliance with France and Russia avoiding any penalties and enganing in joint denounces, wars, trade positive for them and grabbed luxuries for free and gold from them as a gift when I was broke before my snowballing.
I haven;t done any wars early, first war, first city taken, first vassal was in medieval by going steel, physics.
Is there any option to increase the difficulty, so that my strategic and longterm choices actually matter and I could not be shure if I win and Ai could outplay me?
I don't play with 3/4 because it is mostly unbalanced as heel and massively inflates yields, making the game even more easy. In maby cases it is just stupid in choices for uc. I play vanilla, bare VP.

Can next version include some additional difficulty option like free settler for the AI right off the bat and early, subastantial bonuses, more like vanilla deity but not as much?

No. I don't want to brag, you have more expeirence, I play casually since December.
ANti-warmanger bonus is a little to high to be realistic but isn't a hindrance in any way.
But you are completely confusing two separate issues.
Ai gangs up isn;t hard to the player, it is just laughable because they don;t do anything, it isn;t a coalition of thought-out coordinated, simultanoues attacks (IT WoULD BE GREAT BTW) it is phoney wars that acheieve one thing and one thing only, end to any meaning diplomacy and trades after renaissance/industrial/ and vawes of half-brained AI insults.
AI ganging up is a nuisance, is a anti-realistic feeling. It mostly takes places after you began to run away with the game.
Deity sadly is dishearteningly easy due to many combinations of yields that you get from min-maxing city states alliances, buildings, policies, beliefs. At deity I expect this min-maxing to just barely keep afloat and not too far behing others, and the game should force you to act long-term and short term in gaining advantages and taking opportunities, but without certainty that you suceed. The game is worth nothing past the point you know you win and it is also worth nothing when you know exactly what to do to beat AI beause of its lack of bonuses. When there is no real thrill, no real gamble that you will try and maybe will suced in invasion, but now is a certainty that you will beline steel/gunpowder/rifling and grind ai. I want to have games when I war succesfuly in medieval but by industrial mmy empire falls down, due to my mistakes, and due to strong reaction AI )no phony wars) and I have to try redevelop my empire, let some cities flip to ideological pressure and focus on other, let some be taken by strong AI, in order to just survive and have another shot in another era. AT current stage of development there is very little real threat of overextension and once you snowball fir the first time after first vassal/succesful war you never rally have to make such decision as what front to give up and maybe give half of your gpt to ai to keep them at peace, when fighting other on the other side of the map.
I don't mean to whine, this mod is excellent, miles ahead of vanilla, and I would like to contribute, not only point out mistakes, but I think you and VP has a real problem with difficulty. You did excellent job at making AI think and be decent without bonuses, but let's face it, it still needs those massive bonuses to keep deity players entertained and engaged from the first settler to the last nuclear missle/theming bonus.

TLDR: MAybe some real revolts, revolutions spawning, and hapiness slumps be restored from vanilla. Currently in vp conquest are only net gain (which is bturally ahistorical), and there is no threat of overextension and falling apart like mongols, and the fact that your nation may be small and really conquered cities should be more likes puppets )20% of yields/gdp excracted from occupied territores is quite huge and rare historically and it comes at being hated, exterminations, and need of large occuyipng army which needed to be from your lands and away from the frontlines and in VP by annexing you instantly get 100% like that was your most devoted citizens and don't need to keep any military presence in occupied territories.

Sorry for typos, I am 30 hours on my feet, just wanted to leave it.
Just some of my thoughts.

 

The turn counts on the screenshots you posted seem off.
Are you perhaps playing with epic speed instead of standard speed?
(Epic speed is much easier than standard speed.)
In any case, as was mentioned in the thread, you can modify (2) Community Balance Overhaul/Balance Changes/Difficulty/DifficultyMod.xml to make Deity more difficult.

 

Yeah, I play Epic, standard feels completely off for me.
I would like to make those difficulty changes a community optional standard so we can share experiences and work something out. Like a one-time much harder beta version to test how community will react.
I feel Gazevo changes many petty things, it is going back and forth, like what to do with terrracota, taking range from archer, which is just weird when maassive balance issues still plague )example are policies, too many yields from buildings and England UA .

 

Keep in mind that if things are balanced around what happens when you min-max everything it's going to affect gameplay for anyone who doesn't as well. Certainly making deity a proper challenge is part of the goal, just wanted to note that it's not the primary or only objective.

Gazebo works on a lot of things. You might notice if you look through the patchnotes that there are a lot of optimizations and bugfixes so that the game runs more smoothly. Changes also don't happen staight away, it doesn't mean that they have been forgotten. This mod is a big project, so to communicating all of that work in detail is a challenge in itself.

 

In separate post so he will see

Can you post your findings, I dont know older versions. We can also start a new thread to standardize some of difficulty measures to take and share if the play will indeed be better.

 

I strongly disagree that there are massive balance issues.

G

 

That is quite an exaggeration...

 

I know Gazebo works on lot of things and it is admirable that he still devotes his free time to VP. But it is his decision. And if difficulty which for me means fun and engaging play dopped significantly during last years as other more experienced guys poined out, i wonder what is Gazebo course. "You won't have competive ai because we drop bonuses, but you will have broken diplomacy, lots of garbage insults from ai when you a leader, and one-ranged archer"
By min-maxing I meant just a "normal" play e.g. not building chancery when you have one city staty ally and one friend but by the time you had a few, choosing what cs not to ally to avoid diplo penalties, and Those are strategic decision you should be thinking in a strategic game. This is what we play strategy games for. To have a mental challange how and in what order allocate scarce resources to develop our cities and units and diplomacy to allow to be compettive.

 

I think they are quite a few.
SuperNoobCamper and I brought up playthroughs.
Martin Fencka on Youtube plays deity vp and is able to consisntently win despite many mistakes.
Even in last two weeks it surfaced that Imperialism gives as much culture and more science than rationalism xddd being vastly superior
There is no counter to wide play and unrelenting conquests.
Some civs have just plain several tiers better ua

 

Use Really Advanced Setup and give AI some bonuses - you can give anything - gold, units and many more

 

Unfortunately they will be only from start, so it's difficult to balance

 

Regardless of all this heated balance discussion, I will never go back to BNW. Playing it again after playing this mod for so long physically hurts. If you feel like this mod is very unbalanced, I suggest playing the unmodded game again to see how far we have come.

 

If you want to make harder difficulties, do it and post it in the modmod section, like how pineappledan responds to balance choices he disagrees with. Because it seems to me that the community consensus is that the fundamental balance of the game is in a good place right now.

 

Imperialism was only better than rationalism depending on the situation.

I'm curious what settings you use beyond epic? What map type, size, etc. You do realize that epic and marathon are easier than standard, right? Depending on non-standard settings and things like re-rolling for particularly good starts you might be giving yourself extra advantages.

 

- playthroughs aren't balance issues?
- ok? that doesn't equal imbalance
- slightly more science and culture for superwide empires does not equal massive imbalance
- welcome to civ, bud
- and worse UI/UU/UB to compensate

Sorry, but I still disagree. If you have specific balance concerns, we're all ears, but stomping up and saying 'lol ur mod is broken xddd' is profoundly unhelpful.


G