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

[Crag Hack]

But anyway, let's put things into perspective.

Let's assume we agree that 11/2018 was the best because it had least controversy back then.

But that version was the version with unhappiness value often reaching 50 even 80 . That was the norm and it was perceived that those high unhappiness values are normal and as long as your empire was around 30 then nothing to worry too much.

But today's versions are so different that it becomes very tough to compare. I mean in today's versions unhappiness of 80 is absolutely nuts and you should immediately resign from the game.

 

[Gazebo]

I completely agree with you that more controversial versions generate the most posts. I would like to point to you that I said that looks like 11/21/2018 generated the least posts.

It would be better to aggregate the posts of several consecutive patches rather than focusing on a single one.

For example notice how the August-September ones are consistently lower posts, low 200s and even 100s.

9/15 - 208
8/31 - 201
8/16 - 102
8/5 - 215

Could be indicator that around that time the versions got most stable and well received.

But notice how recently the 2020 patches are record in posts and likely because are introducing highly controversial changes. Me thinks

Is this the Instagram method of analysis? # of comments is a terrible method for establishing stability.

G

 

[youngsteve]

Sorry I haven’t given up my full time job to fulfill your impossible expectations.

Also saying ‘no real progress’ is absurd. Just because it isn’t the progress you want doesn’t mean we’re not making improvements with each version. Please step off a bit with the expectations.

G

Can I say what an amazing job you have done with this mod, & without which I doubt the Civ 5 community would be as strong as it is. I have always had utter respect to modders in general, & the amount of time they give, to put so much back into games. Don't listen to the complaints as I sure that most people believe the same as I do, & in agreement in the pleasure a mod like Vox Populi brings to them.

I am not a very good player & play at lower levels, but it seems that there have been many changes made which have been done to placate people playing on the hardest level, who shout the largest, rather than the balance of the mod in general. I can understand this in a way, as the vast majority still playing Civ 5 are mostly experienced players, but it always seems utterly bizarre that instead of playing on a lower level, people would rather make the highest level easier. I always think that any game should be balanced at its default level (prince here?), & higher levels are made higher with additional benefits for AI, & a level like Deity should be for the top 5% of player at most, & be extremely difficult. Perhaps I see it differently from others. I don't know.

Anyway, don't despair, as whatever you do I will be supportive, & thought I would let you know.

 

[Crag Hack]

Is this the Instagram method of analysis? # of comments is a terrible method for establishing stability.

G

Well is not the most scientific method but anyone has a better idea which version to use as a reference and was the bestest ?

Because some people say this versions too easy, others say AI deteriorated in recent versions. So I was thinking let's identify in which version things seemed to be most stable.

 

[youngsteve]

Its times like this I honestly feel I play a different game than other people. Unless I'm playing tall I rarely have 100% happiness. Sometimes I can eek it out later in the game, but certainly not by Renaissance. My guess is that you do some early game voodoo (aka super optimized play) that I don't....which gives you a permanent yield advantage, and therefore a permanent competitive bump in happiness. Which is a concern, because it means that my early game is punishing me for the entirety of my game, whereas you are free not to worry about happiness.

From my general observations of listening to comments & lets/plays there are two sorts of players who play this game & any other in fairness. There are ones who game the game, using any exploit they can make to gain an advantage or others like myself & you who just want to play & enjoy a game. This is why I would never be able to play on highest levels, not excluding the fact I am only an average player. The issue I have is the former are the ones who shout the loudest & changes are made to sort their agenda, which isn't normally for the benefit of the game in general. I think the developers have listened to much to them & have gone away from the goals the mod originally was for.

 

[Recursive]

Well is not the most scientific method but anyone has a better idea which version to use as a reference and was the bestest ?

It er...doesn't really have any scientific basis at all. Correlation does not equal causation.

Which version is best is a matter of subjective opinion and there isn't really a way of scientifically measuring it, but I would point you to the latest stable version because, being more recent, it will have more optimizations, AI improvements and performance fixes than the versions before it. Being a stable version, it will also not have as many experimental changes as the latest beta version will (although you will be missing out on the most recent improvements).

 

[tu_79]

Can I say what an amazing job you have done with this mod, & without which I doubt the Civ 5 community would be as strong as it is. I have always had utter respect to modders in general, & the amount of time they give, to put so much back into games. Don't listen to the complaints as I sure that most people believe the same as I do, & in agreement in the pleasure a mod like Vox Populi brings to them.

I am not a very good player & play at lower levels, but it seems that there have been many changes made which have been done to placate people playing on the hardest level, who shout the largest, rather than the balance of the mod in general. I can understand this in a way, as the vast majority still playing Civ 5 are mostly experienced players, but it always seems utterly bizarre that instead of playing on a lower level, people would rather make the highest level easier. I always think that any game should be balanced at its default level (prince here?), & higher levels are made higher with additional benefits for AI, & a level like Deity should be for the top 5% of player at most, & be extremely difficult. Perhaps I see it differently from others. I don't know.

Anyway, don't despair, as whatever you do I will be supportive, & thought I would let you know.

You get the difficulty wrong.
Let me recapitulate.

G and ilteroi improved AI logic like in the dezens. It made the game too hard. Also, some handicaps were causing inconsistencies among difficulties, so we asked for harmonization and for difficulty to be set with similar handicaps.
In between, a change on how much food and settling requirements changed the early game. As the combined results, difficulty is now easier, but this is neither intended or going to stay. Don't worry about it, difficulty will be restored to its previous splendor, just using different methods.

 

[CrazyG]

I agree there is yield inflation. I’ll disagree that it is intrinsically wrong. Since pantheons deal with ‘small integers’ we have to increase the overall volume of yields from each pantheon in order to provide room for fine tuning. Festivals is a good example - 1 Faith per lux was too low, 2 was too high. We need that granularity to make some pantheons work.

I suppose whether yield inflation is intrinsically bad would be a big philosophical game design question. Generally a small amount is viewed as necessary, and can be enjoyable.

Specifically for pantheons, I think there is a strong argument that this degree of yield inflation is bad. First, it really contributes to being able to snowball out of control in the early game. Second, I think humans on average get a lot more from their pantheon than the AI will. Third, when a pantheon doesn't align for you, the early game just becomes brutally hard. A good example would be starts with forest or jungle plantations but not that much forest or jungle. Springtime is just okay here, commerce and wisdom exist as decent fall backs but all 3 of these are LOVED by the AI.

When competing with others civs for a religion, you need faith fast. The current par for faith would be Commerce/Wisdom/Expanse/War and sort of Love (but Love is very different in human and AI hands), which means to get a religion with something like Goddess of the Hunt, you need extremely well or have a faith wonder or something.

I just think it should be the opposite. The terrain options should be the par for faith output, which a couple a little better. If those high faith options chilled with the faith output you'd have more flexibility in designing the other beliefs. I think it would be enjoyable to play, as you would just have more options to you without having to panick about shrines.

 

[Crag Hack]

It er...doesn't really have any scientific basis at all. Correlation does not equal causation.

Which version is best is a matter of subjective opinion and there isn't really a way of scientifically measuring it, but I would point you to the latest stable version because, being more recent, it will have more optimizations, AI improvements and performance fixes than the versions before it. Being a stable version, it will also not have as many experimental changes as the latest beta version will (although you will be missing out on the most recent improvements).

Right but seems some players don't think so and have some legit arguments. Some people notice inconsistencies and these guys are not here from yesterday. Biteinthemark is here testing since long time, and others too and they don't necessarily think the most recent is the most stable. It is probably stable but they are talking about concept stability, not CTD stability.

Otherwise you are right everyone should judge for himself and I am currently have started a gameplay last night with this version to see what is going on. But am too early in the game to say. The only thing I have noticed so far is that Warriors are stronger and feels alright to me, finally those warriors are useful and can beat the barbarian axemen. That for example feels good to me.

 

[Gazebo]

I suppose whether yield inflation is intrinsically bad would be a big philosophical game design question. Generally a small amount is viewed as necessary, and can be enjoyable.

Specifically for pantheons, I think there is a strong argument that this degree of yield inflation is bad. First, it really contributes to being able to snowball out of control in the early game. Second, I think humans on average get a lot more from their pantheon than the AI will. Third, when a pantheon doesn't align for you, the early game just becomes brutally hard. A good example would be starts with forest or jungle plantations but not that much forest or jungle. Springtime is just okay here, commerce and wisdom exist as decent fall backs but all 3 of these are LOVED by the AI.

When competing with others civs for a religion, you need faith fast. The current par for faith would be Commerce/Wisdom/Expanse/War and sort of Love (but Love is very different in human and AI hands), which means to get a religion with something like Goddess of the Hunt, you need extremely well or have a faith wonder or something.

I just think it should be the opposite. The terrain options should be the par for faith output, which a couple a little better. If those high faith options chilled with the faith output you'd have more flexibility in designing the other beliefs. I think it would be enjoyable to play, as you would just have more options to you without having to panick about shrines.

That’s the rub, though - pantheons are your first big steroid, and the bulk are terrain dependent. So RNG is king which is very hard to balance decently. I don’t have an answer for that.

G

 

[Gazebo]

Right but seems some players don't think so and have some legit arguments. Some people notice inconsistencies and these guys are not here from yesterday. Biteinthemark is here testing since long time, and others too and they don't necessarily think the most recent is the most stable. It is probably stable but they are talking about concept stability, not CTD stability.

Otherwise you are right everyone should judge for himself and I am currently have started a gameplay last night with this version to see what is going on. But am too early in the game to say. The only thing I have noticed so far is that Warriors are stronger and feels alright to me, finally those warriors are useful and can beat the barbarian axemen. That for example feels good to me.

there will always be complainers.


G

 

[JamesNinelives]

I think the developers have listened to much to them & have gone away from the goals the mod originally was for.

If you respect the devs as much as you say, have more faith in their judgement. They have seen people shout at the top of their voices before, and they will see many more to come.

Because some people say this versions too easy, others say AI deteriorated in recent versions. So I was thinking let's identify in which version things seemed to be most stable.

That's what the stable releases are for. That's what they are called 'stable'.

Biteinthemark is here testing since long time, and others too and they don't necessarily think the most recent is the most stable. It is probably stable but they are talking about concept stability, not CTD stability.

Beta versions are not the place to complain about things changing all the time. Testing change is what betas are for, and G has explained that more than once.

As noted elsewhere, these are beta releases intended to push extremes of change. If you're looking for a 'balanced normal game' plan the current stable release.

Biteinthemark has been around long enough to know that, and if you read through old threads you will find that Bite arguing with Gazebo is nothing new.

 

[Recursive]

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

Given the amount of discussion about difficulty going on in this thread, perhaps it'd be helpful to elaborate on what your plans are to increase difficulty?

I noted earlier that I suspect the nerfs to settlers are a significant factor here, because the AI doesn't receive any periodic yield bonuses when they have only one city, and they used to spam cities and gain a lot of bonuses from that. With that slowed by the increase to settler costs, they have a harder time building up their empire in the early game and catching up with a human player later on.

There's also the tile improvement 'bug', but you've already resolved that.

 

[Gazebo]

@CrazyG et. al. here's a current testgame running on Deity:

Bizzy B is on top, does this look out of the norm?

Changes - I haven't touched A/B/C - I gave the AI back its initial founding A bonus (it was formerly only getting that on city #2) and I fixed a bug where I was artificially deflating that value in the function. So A/B/C is higher now by virtue of being directly scaled from the XML to yields with no DLL 'secret filters' The original function is still being used that was designed awhile ago, I just removed an artificial limitation I added later by accident.

G

 

[CrazyG]

@CrazyG et. al. here's a current testgame running on Deity:

View attachment 546366

Bizzy B is on top, does this look out of the norm?

Changes - I haven't touched A/B/C - I gave the AI back its initial founding A bonus (it was formerly only getting that on city #2) and I fixed a bug where I was artificially deflating that value in the function. So A/B/C is higher now by virtue of being directly scaled from the XML to yields with no DLL 'secret filters' The original function is still being used that was designed awhile ago, I just removed an artificial limitation I added later by accident.

G

Is that standard speed? 11 social policies and 36 techs on turn 135 is crazy high. Like 4 social and 10 techs ahead of where the AI are in my current game.

I imagine this will be a "careful what I wish for" patch.

 

[Gazebo]

Is that standard speed? 11 social policies and 36 techs on turn 135 is crazy high. Like 4 social and 10 techs ahead of where the AI are in my current game.

I imagine this will be a "careful what I wish for" patch.

That's what I wanted to know - yes it is Standard Speed Deity. Now Bizzy is isolated and surrounded by CSs, which helps him a lot. I'll probably tweak down the A/B/C a bit to compensate. Just a bit.

G

 

[CrazyG]

That's what I wanted to know - yes it is Standard Speed Deity. Now Bizzy is isolated and surrounded by CSs, which helps him a lot. I'll probably tweak down the A/B/C a bit to compensate. Just a bit.

G

Germany always kicks butt on Deity. How close are the others?

 

[Gazebo]

Germany always kicks butt on Deity. How close are the others?

A few turns later, but China is #2. Portugal has more techs (41).

 

[Rekk]

You're basically advocating power creep. You know pantheons used to be great? Sun God, Goddess of the Hunt. They'll all need a buff soon. As is I wouldn't take sun god on a 4 wheat capital.

I'm advocating balancing toward the mean. It's easier to bring one pantheon up than to bring 10 pantheons down (and it's easier to bring one pantheon down than 10 pantheons up). If Earth Mother was over-buffed, then it's now above the mean and needs to be brought down. Maybe the mean should be where Sun God is, but as far as I can tell, Earth Mother was by far the worst pantheon and should have never been picked, even 3 years ago.

Whether or not it was buffed properly is a different story.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I'm not sure I like the settling bonus applying to the AI settling its capital, I fear it'll make a lot of current possible, yet risky opening strategies for the human too risky to entertain.

As for the ABC increase due to removal of unintended deflation, I guess we'll have to wait and see how it plays out in different settings and we can further tweak it, both mod-wide and each player in his/her local files.