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

[tu_79]

Eee... who cares? I do not how you like to spend you time but it is a strange idea. But players like me want an entertaining challenge throughout the game, which abruptly ends when you are first with everything and subjugated half the map, and it would be only another fifty turns to grind through next AI which throws newly trained tercios at sixth level fusilliers and gatling guns. And doing that will only yield lots of science, granting me atomic era before most of them entered modern and enough gold to upgrade everything.
I tend to lose interest in any game when it is already decided, not engaging, not challenging, and is just securing top spot. I do not take deity to do that.



That are good things to hear. And it is an excellent idea. But how possible it is to code such a complex conditioning to AI?
Also great job on AI trickery with city-states when declaring war, flipping them the same turn. It happened to me several times with multiple city states captured. This is a mindset that AI that wish to compete with player should have.




Tradition have many more problems than happiness, specifically against warmongers and productive wide AIs. Specifically it has 1. production starved capital and cities which needs to work bonus buildings from policies, then guilds early (scientists are also hurt by that) and good food tiles to obtain all specialists as quickly as possible and grow fast and all that little production is going for wonders, many times you struggle with even normal buildings, building units in capital or core guilds cities is impossible if you want to develop and grab wonders 2. it is gold starved so it really can not buy units or invest in buildings as it is needed to secure wonders by investing in them 3. low supply cap to defend itself coupled with low production and low equates bad news when whole war declares on you because you going influential with everyone and have half of wonders, also it means no trade and no technology sells during late game which tends to be my only substantial gold source while tall 4. lack of strategic resources
In fact I find tradition tall games as of current versions more challenging than wide progress or warmongering.
The problem is Authority is insanely good because it is letting you have the same development as progress and tradition with insanely good scaling production (which is better than anything progress have) which applies to all cities and free settler on top of that. It can edge or at least keep up with tradition and progress in science and culture by constantly killing units and taking cities. Moreover all standard benefits as capturing wonders and devloped capitals apply also. In my last game I had not built any units beside a few. You have many quickly developing cities, you have developed conquered cities, they can do well without investing and you have gold to buy all your units.
Authority is king. It is not risky, it gives you everything it should deprave you of (weak development and science, culture as honor in vanilla). It dhould give you just good army.
Also Progress is strange first policy tree as it shines mostly middle-late game, especially in conjunction with industry.


Progress shines in late game warmongering. It is just much worse Authority early, at the time game is many times decided.

Much love to you all.

You have detailed every single issue tradition style must face. Fine. But for me, it's just that happiness limits how many cities you can keep happy from your city. The rest of the tradition problems derive from this fact.

You may not want to continue the game until the end, and that's fine, but be aware that Authority is especially good at the early game, even without fighting, but if you fail to capitalize on the advantage, your late game will not succeed. Also remember that you are playing epic pace, while policies are balanced around standard pace.

It's like complaining about the fact that the Aztecs completely dominate the early game, while Austria is crap. If you keep playing Austria until industrial age and manage to survive, you will win more often with Austria than the Aztecs. That's the thing with late bloomers, they are better suited to win if left alone, so playing an early bloomer you must be sure that you hindered those as much as possible. It comes to no surprise that many games are lost because a runaway civ out of reach. You dominate your early game, your continent, make everyone nearby a vassal, and then some civ in another continent suddenly skyrockets its techs, you try to stop it but can't send enough units in time since they are well protected in the other side of the world.

I agree with you that it should be fun, and it looks like you stop having fun mid game. You think you have won, and it might not be truth (you win when the victory message appears, not before then). But it doesn't matter if you still can lose, what matters is that there's a period where you are feeling overconfident and you get bored. What this says to me is that you need to raise handicap B value.

 

[youngsteve]

People have been demanding nerf after nerf to ‘unfair’ AI handicaps so that everyone can play Deity. This is the result. I’m going to...resolve this.

G

Unfortunately, this is not just related to Vox Populi or even Civ 5 or any Civilization game, but an issue with nearly every game. Elitist players take control & demand this & that so they can play on the hardest level with no real concern for the balance of a game. So the game usually gets easier & more unbalanced as these people shout loudest. Developers try to stop exploits & balance a game but are then attacked for making it harder The Paradox forums are very similar. You cannot win. Instead of playing a lower level these people demand a game is made easier so they can play the hardest level. There are many excellent players who don't do this, & want a challenge, but are having to put in their own restrictions to keep the challenge up.

My personal opinion is Deity should be for the really top elite players, not every Tom, Dick & Harry who plays the mod. I have viewed so many average players on letsplays winning on Deity with this mod or BNW, making mistake after mistake, but having no problem at all. This mod or any game should be balanced for the default level & built up from there, which I believe it was originally.

 

[Zuizgond]

EDIT : The pathing issue seems to be units both civilians, military and GG ignoring the presence of the roads and preferring the more direct route even if it takes more turns, i had to manually move every unit tile by tile, sometimes this is not even feasible if you have to transfer a unit from a non-road tile to a road tile occupied with a unit with no moves left.

I confirm something has changed regarding pathing. Units don't seem to consider roads when choosing the fastest route to go to destination.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I have no issue whatsover with the AI numerical bonuses increasing. Especially if that makes people happy! Let's try it and see how it goes?

an issue with nearly every game

I think you might be exaggerating just a little there. It's credible that you have witnessed certain patterns in the games that you follow. Implying that must neccesarily be true here is questionable.

This mod or any game should be balanced for the default level & built up from there, which I believe it was originally.

Sure. But the average player does not play on Deity. That includes a lot of people here who have been playing this mod for years.

Elitist players take control & demand this & that so they can play on the hardest level with no real concern for the balance of a game. So the game usually gets easier & more unbalanced as these people shout loudest.

My personal opinion is Deity should be for the really top elite players

Not really sure who the elitist here is. You might want to look up the definition of that word.

winning on Deity with this mod or BNW

Let's be totally clear: those are not the same thing.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I think the early game is generally okay, except the AI doesn't settle very quickly. I basically always get my next settler down before they do, which means I never get beat to city locations.

Late game, pump up those numbers.

Honestly, being forward settled was the #1 most annoying thing about this mod when I started using it. I'm much much happier with how things are now. (I support increasing the numerical handicap.)

For example, I do a build order of monument-shrine-settler sometimes. Anyone can do that, and you get your second city down way before the AI does.

Anyone can, but not everyone does. I like to think there should be more than one best opening. If that is the case, then maybe something more than just the modifiers does need to be changed. I'd prefer making settler rushes less of a go-to than encouraging the AI to expand faster. Although I would be happy to agree with some kind of compromise.

Perhaps the weaker AIs could pour their resources into making one of the bigger players stronger (whichever they believe is the "lesser evil"), among other options.

I am very biased in this regard, but I wholeheartedly support this idea .

 

[Zuizgond]

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.

View attachment 545979

I encountered the same issue, but in the other way. First CS put a holy site on horses (it was the first time I saw a CS building a holy site, not sure if it's a bug) and then swapped it for a citadel (?) that did not claim the surrounding tiles.

 

[arievillo]

Is anyone else having problems with the diplomacy button? For me, it is blocked, i can't access diplomacy options. Already created a github ticket.

 

[Bryan317]

Eee... who cares? I do not how you like to spend you time but it is a strange idea. But players like me want an entertaining challenge throughout the game, which abruptly ends when you are first with everything and subjugated half the map, and it would be only another fifty turns to grind through next AI which throws newly trained tercios at sixth level fusilliers and gatling guns. And doing that will only yield lots of science, granting me atomic era before most of them entered modern and enough gold to upgrade everything.
I tend to lose interest in any game when it is already decided, not engaging, not challenging, and is just securing top spot. I do not take deity to do that.

Ok... If you are a player that has truly annexed or puppeted half of the World by the time you have fusilier... then yes you are a pro begging for more challenge. And I'm willing to make the argument for you that Diety should be made insane for you. I'm willing to see all difficulties raised. New people to this mod should start at settler! However I'm also Going to make this point. This is not a pure War simulation. And while you may have taken over half the world. Can you actually maintain the happiness the rest of the game? Maybe the World Congress make some changes that threw some wrenches in your streamlined approach?

That should actually be a role playing theme of an Authority game is to quickly take over a large area then deal with the trouble of actually maintaining it. Now, I don't know whether or not this theme/challenge is being presented to you... Maybe it's not hard enough. But this should be the theme of it in my opinion. Not just pure conquest and no chance of an unruly populace. It's also amazing how the little guy can catch up to you technologically and put up a fight in the information era. And, okay you took over half the world? Maybe you should try some different settings. If you can do that on huge/22civ then I truly bow to you sir.

 

[tu_79]

Ok... If you are a player that has truly annexed or puppeted half of the World by the time you have fusilier... then yes you are a pro begging for more challenge. And I'm willing to make the argument for you that Diety should be made insane for you. I'm willing to see all difficulties raised. New people to this mod should start at settler! However I'm also Going to make this point. This is not a pure War simulation. And while you may have taken over half the world. Can you actually maintain the happiness the rest of the game. Maybe the World Congress make some changes that threw some wrenches in your streamlined approach. It's also amazing how the little guy can catch up to you technologically and put up a fight in the information era. And, okay you took over half the world? Maybe you should try some different settings. If you can do that on huge/22civ then I truly bow to you sir.

At this point I would be willing to say make deity as insane as possible. Make it start with no units while the AI gets the full stock of warriors and pathfinders. Heck it would be nice if they had to go through a couple of turns of researching agriculture THEN get a settler LOL

It's a valid point that he has not won until proven, but it is also a fact that he was getting bored. Several anti warmonger mechanics were introduced to try to prevent the player from being in such situations too early, but if the rein is too tight people complain about the artificial limitations.

Also, the main reason for equaling handicaps is that feedback from lower difficulties is still meaningful. Otherwise the game gets tuned up for deity and the experience becomes unbalanced for the lower difficulties.
If you want customized challenges, there's a mod called Really Advanced Setup that works precisely for this. There you can experience what it is to gift all AI several bonuses at start.

 

[Bryan317]

It's a valid point that he has not won until proven, but it is also a fact that he was getting bored. Several anti warmonger mechanics were introduced to try to prevent the player from being in such situations too early, but if the rein is too tight people complain about the artificial limitations.

Also, the main reason for equaling handicaps is that feedback from lower difficulties is still meaningful. Otherwise the game gets tuned up for deity and the experience becomes unbalanced for the lower difficulties.
If you want customized challenges, there's a mod called Really Advanced Setup that works precisely for this. There you can experience what it is to gift all AI several bonuses at start.

I have also used IGE mod for the sole purpose of helping the AI with something. You could do ANYTHING with IGE to alter the AI. Give them tech,social policies,...anything. Be warned... while you might think you're helping the AI you can start to throw off the mechanics a lot if you make changes you dont realize. For instance you think I might want to help them boost their population so you give them 10 pop points. Well they also got all the "A citizen is born" bonuses too. Which could be quite extensive depending on how many bonuses they have attached to this. And maybe population isn't what they wanted because now they have more unhappiness. Something could inadvertently help you also. You might think I'm going to help this enemy fight me off a little longer and give them some units. But you're going to get the experience for killing all those units. I also suggest making the changes you feel necessary then taking IGE back off to remove any temptation of you cheating. LOL

 

[Stalker0]

I will also say if Diety players want a greater challenge, the easiest way to do that....remove the range and logistics promotions as options in your games. Those are the main force multipliers in the game, take those out and your going to have a much harder time just steamrolling the world.

 

[crdvis16]

I will also say if Diety players want a greater challenge, the easiest way to do that....remove the range and logistics promotions as options in your games. Those are the main force multipliers in the game, take those out and your going to have a much harder time just steamrolling the world.

Also, don't play epic/marathon where warfare is more of a crutch. Can also play peaceful games that are sometimes harder and break up the grindiness of heavy warmongering.

I'm not opposed to G making things innately harder either, though. I don't care if I'm playing at deity or immortal or whatever- I'll play at whatever level gives me a consistent challenge.

 

[Recursive]

Is the diplomacy logic tied to a leader personality?
Is there a list of these personalities somewhere?
I found out that playing with random personalities is a must for me BTW.

AIs are more or less likely to adopt specific diplomacy approaches based on their individual leader bias. A list of these biases can be found here (randomized by +/- 2 from game to game): https://civ-5-cbp.fandom.com/wiki/Detailed_Guide_to_Diplomacy

There are certain other values as well that are dependent on leader personality, although their impact is smaller.

Random Personalities just has the AI choose a random other AI leader's personality values (which may be less suited to them).

Played a game (1-11, installing 2-9b right now) recently after not touching this game for a few months. Some positive changes I noticed is that the AI was capable of holding long-term alliances and didn't backstab and denounce you the moment you captured a city. I also enjoyed the AI actually going out of their way to collaborate against me (WC proposals, DoF's with my other enemies) and having some difficulties in the WC despite having the most delegates by far. I also enjoyed that the AI would try to focus their efforts on a city-state with diplomat spam in order to try to flip it, although it's possible I'm just giving the AI too much credit. Honestly, based on what I'd heard in the Greece thread under Leader Balance, I thought Greece would be pretty weak. Greece seems like a very strong, balanced civ from my experience. Maybe I just had a lucky game?
One minor criticism I have (perhaps it's been changed in the latest version) is that the vassal AI tends to keep grudges for too long. One one hand, I understand that it's probably reasonable for the AI to be pissed at me for completely capitulating them to me and taking a large portion of their revenues; on the other hand, we're a team now, aren't we? Especially if I have the Iron Fist tenet: staying bitter for 100s of turns just seems pointless. Don't you think the vassals should eventually be friendly, especially if you are generous in their economic affairs? But I'm a noob, I'm sure there's a reason for this.

I'm glad you had a positive experience with diplomacy.

The vassal AI clears a large number of penalties upon capitulation, and applies a large modifier based on how you treat them...I'll look at this.

Eee... who cares? I do not how you like to spend you time but it is a strange idea. But players like me want an entertaining challenge throughout the game, which abruptly ends when you are first with everything and subjugated half the map, and it would be only another fifty turns to grind through next AI which throws newly trained tercios at sixth level fusilliers and gatling guns. And doing that will only yield lots of science, granting me atomic era before most of them entered modern and enough gold to upgrade everything.
I tend to lose interest in any game when it is already decided, not engaging, not challenging, and is just securing top spot. I do not take deity to do that.



That are good things to hear. And it is an excellent idea. But how possible it is to code such a complex conditioning to AI?
Also great job on AI trickery with city-states when declaring war, flipping them the same turn. It happened to me several times with multiple city states captured. This is a mindset that AI that wish to compete with player should have.




Tradition have many more problems than happiness, specifically against warmongers and productive wide AIs. Specifically it has 1. production starved capital and cities which needs to work bonus buildings from policies, then guilds early (scientists are also hurt by that) and good food tiles to obtain all specialists as quickly as possible and grow fast and all that little production is going for wonders, many times you struggle with even normal buildings, building units in capital or core guilds cities is impossible if you want to develop and grab wonders 2. it is gold starved so it really can not buy units or invest in buildings as it is needed to secure wonders by investing in them 3. low supply cap to defend itself coupled with low production and low equates bad news when whole war declares on you because you going influential with everyone and have half of wonders, also it means no trade and no technology sells during late game which tends to be my only substantial gold source while tall 4. lack of strategic resources
In fact I find tradition tall games as of current versions more challenging than wide progress or warmongering.
The problem is Authority is insanely good because it is letting you have the same development as progress and tradition with insanely good scaling production (which is better than anything progress have) which applies to all cities and free settler on top of that. It can edge or at least keep up with tradition and progress in science and culture by constantly killing units and taking cities. Moreover all standard benefits as capturing wonders and devloped capitals apply also. In my last game I had not built any units beside a few. You have many quickly developing cities, you have developed conquered cities, they can do well without investing and you have gold to buy all your units.
Authority is king. It is not risky, it gives you everything it should deprave you of (weak development and science, culture as honor in vanilla). It dhould give you just good army.
Also Progress is strange first policy tree as it shines mostly middle-late game, especially in conjunction with industry.


Progress shines in late game warmongering. It is just much worse Authority early, at the time game is many times decided.

Much love to you all.

I plan on making major improvements to diplomacy, deals, etc. AI throughout this year.

Can't take credit for the spy changes, I didn't touch that code.

 

[civplayer33]

I also want to give a shoutout to the WC-behavior by the AI...I've seen some very good and surprisingly competent moves there where I was successfully antagonized multiple times despite holding a vast majority of the "seats".

 

[CrazyG]

I also want to give a shoutout to the WC-behavior by the AI...I've seen some very good and surprisingly competent moves there where I was successfully antagonized multiple times despite holding a vast majority of the "seats".

I still see weird world congress behavior. There are resolutions that everyone constantly supports, like historical landmarks or the natural wonder buff. No Alexander, you don't have a natural wonder, you don't want this. Neutral would be okay, but he outright supports it and thank me for suggesting it.

You regularly see AI that support both Casus Belli and Standing Army Tax, even though they are total opposites. Usually if one of these passes, all AI will support repealing it as well. Like Mongolia proposed Casus Belli and thanked me for suggesting repealing it, WTH?

My last game I went to propose passport system. Before I got my suggestion, the iroquious already proposed passport system, I had a diplomat in their capital and thought about buying some votes. The turn after suggesting it, I check his views towards the resolutions, and he opposes passport system. He uses 10 of 12 votes against his own proposal.

Usually all civs support all projects all the time. I recall India with no coastal cities proposing treasure fleet, and civs intending to win by tourism all supporting stuff like UN or international spacestation.

I'm not opposed to G making things innately harder either, though. I don't care if I'm playing at deity or immortal or whatever- I'll play at whatever level gives me a consistent challenge.

That's how I feel. I actually want to lose occasionally, the game should have the option to be hard. For years I switched between immortal and deity, usually losing one and winning the other. More than once AI improvement would knock me down, sometimes to emperor, and I would a few games of experience on a patch before moving back up to immortal, then deity. It hasn't been like that for at least a year.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

A holy site is constructed in CS if you pay them to improve a resource now!

 

[Stalker0]

More than once AI improvement would knock me down, sometimes to emperor, and I would a few games of experience on a patch before moving back up to immortal, then deity. It hasn't been like that for at least a year.

Yet in recent discussions you said the Anti-warmonger bonus was so painful (before the recent update) that the only time you could make progress against the AI was by using citadels. I feel there's a disconnect here.

 

[CrazyG]

I will also say if Diety players want a greater challenge, the easiest way to do that....remove the range and logistics promotions as options in your games. Those are the main force multipliers in the game, take those out and your going to have a much harder time just steamrolling the world.

You can dominate peacefully on deity, the AI just sucks at science you can take a tech/culture lead if you used your specialists or religion to get those yields. I think basically any wonder can be built pretty consistently, and a decent start with an early religion can build a whole lot of them. This is very recent though, the last 6 or so months only.

An example is that I can pretty regularly build the Great Library, for years it was just about impossible on deity or even immortal. I'm not doing anything notable either; just click pottery then shift click writing at the start of the game. If your capital has enough production for like a 7 turn build time you will usually get it, you don't even need pantheon science. The archer nerf sort of slowed this down, but really the AI on Deity very, very rarely declares war within the first 80 turns (Aztec is the exception). I think it is also why authority AI keep falling behind tradition and progress in my games.

Yet in recent discussions you said the Anti-warmonger bonus was so painful (before the recent update) that the only time you could make progress against the AI was by using citadels. I feel there's a disconnect here.

At some point the warmonger bonus did get way out of line. If you check the 3-pop challenge, I think I mention that when fighting Russia and controlling two capitals I faced a 40+% warmonger fervor. I recall games in late 2019 I would take a single city and the AI got an 81% bonus from that alone, which sometimes I really couldn't overcome. I might win that game peacefully, but militarily it was brutal unless I had a big tech lead. I'm not backing down on those comments, Persia getting an 81% bonus because I took some junk city he forward settled was pure absolute BS, an example of seriously bad game design (I'm aware it wasn't the design goal and I don't mind G experimenting, but holy god that patch was so painful to play).

The new one is probably too generous to warmongers, you can get someone's capital and confront a tiny, like 3% fervor penatly. Honestly I'd be fine reverting to some of the older systems, I don't know exactly which patch it was but I think whenever the distance modifier got added it frankly became an abomination. Sure the older systems weren't perfect (I was someone who criticized them), but I've really realized that they generally did work. Even if you did work around the penalties by capturing only the non-capital cities, that did present a pretty decent downside to deal with. I'm willing to acknowledge I was wrong in some of those assessments.

 

[Gazebo]

I still see weird world congress behavior. There are resolutions that everyone constantly supports, like historical landmarks or the natural wonder buff. No Alexander, you don't have a natural wonder, you don't want this. Neutral would be okay, but he outright supports it and thank me for suggesting it.

You regularly see AI that support both Casus Belli and Standing Army Tax, even though they are total opposites. Usually if one of these passes, all AI will support repealing it as well. Like Mongolia proposed Casus Belli and thanked me for suggesting repealing it, WTH?

My last game I went to propose passport system. Before I got my suggestion, the iroquious already proposed passport system, I had a diplomat in their capital and thought about buying some votes. The turn after suggesting it, I check his views towards the resolutions, and he opposes passport system. He uses 10 of 12 votes against his own proposal.

Usually all civs support all projects all the time. I recall India with no coastal cities proposing treasure fleet, and civs intending to win by tourism all supporting stuff like UN or international spacestation.

That's how I feel. I actually want to lose occasionally, the game should have the option to be hard. For years I switched between immortal and deity, usually losing one and winning the other. More than once AI improvement would knock me down, sometimes to emperor, and I would a few games of experience on a patch before moving back up to immortal, then deity. It hasn't been like that for at least a year.

AI resolution support if 'neutral' is largely driven by a desire to make other civs like them more if they think they'll like the proposal.

G

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

A city with 60 in medieval era .... No, it's not India with the old Qila, 4th UC is updated and i have no idea what is this ?

Spoiler What am i missing ? :