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

[Balint2]

I tried out deity in the previous patch twice

First game I went with a mostly peacefull dutch and the runaway was hitting the 80 tech at turn 330 (map size, speed, everything standard, tectonics map)
Next game I went with warmonger Japan and had been antagonizing the that game runaway all game, so that game at turn 330, the AI with the most techs had only 55
Soo based on on my experience of only 2 games which I realise is not a too big of a poll Id say its a bit weird behaviour and gameplay
The difference shouldnt be that big imho if this actually happens to be the normal case.

Also in my 2. game with Japan I was playing far suboptimally (4 city authority going for culture\domination victory with a mostly melee army(at least I got my samurais to lvl 23 I think, heh)) and still easily won just because I was soaking so much enemy units all game (won at turn 460 with culture after killing the kinda 2. runaway Brazil)

1 more note: that was one of my most peacefull games, my immortal games are not that peacefull: almost no1 declared war on me the whole game and I had 3 vassals and wiped Brazil out too. In my other immortal games being full peacefull, having more units , not using spies, not building wonders, giving gifts, denouncing the warmonger, not being the runaway I have all the time 9 civs constantly in war with me, so it was super weird.
I guess the "fought with a common enemy" factors in a lil too much
Even guarded Morocco wanted friendship with me

So yeah I too can see 1 peacefull being too weak compared to warmonger 2 diety being not super hard to warmongers

Which it should be imho too
Deity being "dumb hard" and immortal being balanced normally

Could be wrong tho just my 2 cents

 

[Gazebo]

I don't know how you know what is the current version based on. I rarely see useful descriptions and explanations here. Apparently Civilopedia is useless too. A system without explaining what it is doing is like no system at all.

If you find an incorrect entry, submit a bug report. Simple, I'm sure you can figure it out, see my signature.

G

 

[BiteInTheMark]

If you find an incorrect entry, submit a bug report. Simple, I'm sure you can figure it out, see my signature.

G

Hard to estimate which information is wrong, if you are a beginner and only have one source.

I don't know how you know what is the current version based on. I rarely see useful descriptions and explanations here. Apparently Civilopedia is useless too. A system without explaining what it is doing is like no system at all.

Playing the game for 4 years and reading each patch note. Unfortunatly VP was never really beginner friendly, cause of its complexity, but I think it has made some progress into this direction.

 

[Mambo668]

Taking one metric in one game really doesn't give you a good idea of what's going on. What happened in this game is simply I am playing a civ has a very strong early game and got extremely lucky.

The previous game which I didn't post (same difficulty, same civ, same settings) I got my arse kicked. The only thing that really tells you is that the Shoshone can be very swingy, and perhaps that I play this civ a lot. Also worth noting this is not standard settings, it is a Huge map on Epic speed.

Update: I got a screenshot of the Vikings threatening me this time .

Spoiler Its an omen :

View attachment 546427

I am also at war with three of my neighbours now (England, the Iroquois who pretended to by my friend, and The Huns) because a) I expanded very rapidly and b) I neglected to build enough military. I actually declared war on the Huns myself because Austria offered a joint war. I was prepared to defend against England sooner or later but didn't account for Hiawatha. And to be fair, the Iroquois did warn me they weren't happy when I denounced England (in order to gain a city-state alliance). I just hope Morocco to the South doesn't join in.

Is's one game but when U say now it is huge map wchich means 16 AI opponents? 13-14 AI's got super unlucky? They are going terrible bad. So 5 or 6 AI players wchich we don't see on score list has even more pathetic score. Harald is attacking Ur tercios and cannons wchich spearmen catapults and fishing boats I gues If there would be less rubber band mechanics 2 eras later U could use tanks against trebs. This is what 12 others AI's score means (800 vs 300 points) . They are in hopeless situation.
Please don't take it as an attack on U as a player. I am just pointing that in my opinion VP became too easy. Iam playing on deity now and it feels much easier than immortall 2 years ago.

 

[Recursive]

Difficulty should be restored next version, city founding and historic events will provide larger (2-3x more) yield boosts to the AI, and they can apply from the start of the game. As G said, A/B/C values will be lowered a bit to compensate, but AI should perform better on higher difficulties for sure.

In addition, they should be improving their tiles again, G made significant improvements to the Worker logic from what I can see.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Is's one game but when U say now it is huge map wchich means 16 AI opponents?

Huge map with 11 opponents for 12 civs total, Continents Plus map script. I'm also using the Community Events for VP mod.

Harald is attacking Ur tercios and cannons wchich spearmen catapults and fishing boats I gues

Actually, Harald never attacked me - he got eaten up by the Iroquois, who in turn were attacked by Morocco . The Huns vassalised Austria, and were then attacked by Indonesia, but with the vassal in between Austria were the real loosers in that war. Everyone has multiple defensive pacts at this point (except me).

I got both of my great works of writing stolen at one point because I had put them in a non-capital city to take advantage of the theming bonus from the Ampitheatre there and then forgot about them.

Spoiler End for now :

Again though, taking the outlier as an example of the norm is going to be misleading. It's notable that while at the start of the game I had lots of friends over time people liked me less and less. I expect that if I played all the way through I would have ended up in constant warfare. I guess we'll see how things change in the next version anyway.

Spoiler Breakdown of diplomacy :

One last note from this game: embarked non-combat units seem to be interfering with each other in a way that didn't happen before. I'm not sure if it's intended or not, but I found it kind of annoying, specifically when I want to group my missionaries together so they can be escorted safely by a ship.

Spoiler Getting in each others way :

 

[CrazyG]

I thought certain insult messages were disabled in VP. I stand corrected.

I really like those messages. They provide a way around the large number of defensive pacts. Overall a fun feature. Plus many of the lines make me laugh. "Are you trying to be a city-state?"

 

[Recursive]

I really like those messages. They provide a way around the large number of defensive pacts. Overall a fun feature. Plus many of the lines make me laugh. "Are you trying to be a city-state?"

I'm not gonna remove them.

 

[Recursive]

Actually, Harald never attacked me - he got eaten up by the Iroquois, who in turn were attacked by Morocco . The Huns vassalised Austria, and were then attacked by Indonesia, but with the vassal in between Austria were the real loosers in that war. Everyone has multiple defensive pacts at this point (except me).

Again though, taking the outlier as an example of the norm is going to be misleading. It's notable that while at the start of the game I had lots of friends over time people liked me less and less. I expect that if I played all the way through I would have ended up in constant warfare. I guess we'll see how things change in the next version anyway.

I've made some adjustments to the way the diplomacy AI estimates military strength - let's see how it goes in the next beta.

Edit: See here for description
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/diplomacy-ai-development.655040/page-2#post-15675941

 

[CrazyG]

I updated the most recent version, I still get the holy sites on city state resources thing. Is there a way to just disable the improve resource option? Having it gone would cause a lot fewer problems that the random citadels and lack of luxuries from CS (a lot of impossible WLTKD right now).

 

[Acaerus]

I just wanted to say that... someone stole 23k of gold from one of my cities and that was 25 turns ago and now my treasury goes to zero every 3 turns

 

[Recursive]

I just wanted to say that... someone stole 23k of gold from one of my cities and that was 25 turns ago and now my treasury goes to zero every 3 turns

Looking at the repository, it looks like there was a bug adding a 100x multiplier to Gold theft, or something like that. Should be better next version.

 

[SolutionIt]

I never rush construction mainly because the civs/settings I play favour Calender, Military Theory or Fishing. I always take Construction before Trade though, unless I'm next to Sugar or Spices. Construction is needed to get to Mathematics, which is a go-to tech IMO .

Is that a communitas map setting? I had to switch to tectonics cause that was getting old for me at some point. Even then without stone and construction luxs near me I still don't rush it. Only time I think I ever rushed it was when I finally decided to play as a trade route civ lol.

Edit: For reference is was the Tlingit for their internal trade route buff. I then learned quickly how good a civ that buffs internal prod rates can be. Actually crazy lol.

 

[DeAnno]

For reference is was the Tlingit for their internal trade route buff. I then learned quickly how good a civ that buffs internal prod rates can be. Actually crazy lol.

I do like production trade routes a lot early when I can swing them, which often means I research Construction before Trade, to quarry the resource and build the Stone Works. Being able to production route to your newest cities is very good to get them on the right foot.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Is that a communitas map setting? I had to switch to tectonics cause that was getting old for me at some point. Even then without stone and construction luxs near me I still don't rush it. Only time I think I ever rushed it was when I finally decided to play as a trade route civ lol.

Edit: For reference is was the Tlingit for their internal trade route buff. I then learned quickly how good a civ that buffs internal prod rates can be. Actually crazy lol.

Nah, I use Really Advanced Setup to give myself a mixed grassland/jungle bias, because that's my favourite part of the map (I like green lol). To be clear I still absolutely go for Construction when I have quarry resources (especially Marble), I just don't rush it in the sense of ignoring the other techs that might be easier to reach.

 

[Bromar1]

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

What if terrain dependent yields were weakened but spread out across more terrain types/features?

For example:
Hunt - instead of strong yields on just camps, it could give weaker yields on camps, and pastures.

Open sky- instead of strong yields on pastures, could be weak yields on any improved resource on flat land.

Sun and Springtime - both give weak yields on farms and plantations but have different secondary effect.

While the avg number of plantations can vary highly and the avg number of wheat farms can also vary highly, the avg number of plantations AND wheat combined should be less variable overall.

Basically, this helps normalize the volume of yields for any given situation and can smoothe out the extremely strong and extremely weak pantheon situations.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Man, to be honest conflict can sometimes entertain me, but this thread was just very saddening and frustrating to read.

I agree that some people have quite a nasty tone in their posts on here, which certainly is a bad strategy if you want to be listened to. That in itself isn't enough to dismiss the points in the post though, and I can understand that people can get frustrated when they write a very thorough post, only to get dismissed by a one-sentence post. What I am saying is basically that I think some people are being persistent and sometimes rude, but that that probably wouldn't happen as much if people felt listened to. And that last point is mostly directed at Gazebo.

Gazebo, you are doing a masterful job overall and sometimes people take stuff like that for granted. You are only human, and if people are being rude/ungrateful to you, I get that you can get hurt and therefore post something that is kind of defensive. In my opinion though I think you would benefit from being a bit more communicative. Obviously, time is a finite resource and time spent giving reasons to decisions is time not spent developing the game, but I think that is one reason why people have reacted badly to the 1 range archer change etc. I hope that you don't feel this is too harsh on you, just trying to help out a bit with what I observe (which of course might be wrong)

To Civplayer33 and Pineappledan: For strictly egoistical reasons I hope you guys come back, because you are contributing immensely to this community. If you feel that it is the right decisions for yourselves, then obviously we respect that You will be missed by everyone in this community if you do leave, though!

To all of us including myself: Let's try to actually be constructive and polite towards eachother, even if we disagree. Tone is a big deal, and a good tone with a bad message is more effective than a better message with bad tone if you want people to listen to you.

 

[ASCII Guy]

If they are both gone for good, they will be greatly missed. I have used mods made by both of them extensively.

 

[Stalker0]

Tone is a big deal, and a good tone with a bad message is more effective than a better message with bad tone if you want people to listen to you.

Someone put this on a billboard please.

 

[Gazebo]

What if terrain dependent yields were weakened but spread out across more terrain types/features?

For example:
Hunt - instead of strong yields on just camps, it could give weaker yields on camps, and pastures.

Open sky- instead of strong yields on pastures, could be weak yields on any improved resource on flat land.

Sun and Springtime - both give weak yields on farms and plantations but have different secondary effect.

While the avg number of plantations can vary highly and the avg number of wheat farms can also vary highly, the avg number of plantations AND wheat combined should be less variable overall.

Basically, this helps normalize the volume of yields for any given situation and can smoothe out the extremely strong and extremely weak pantheon situations.

My knee-jerk reaction is that this would blur and muddy the pantheons quite a bit.

Man, to be honest conflict can sometimes entertain me, but this thread was just very saddening and frustrating to read.

I agree that some people have quite a nasty tone in their posts on here, which certainly is a bad strategy if you want to be listened to. That in itself isn't enough to dismiss the points in the post though, and I can understand that people can get frustrated when they write a very thorough post, only to get dismissed by a one-sentence post. What I am saying is basically that I think some people are being persistent and sometimes rude, but that that probably wouldn't happen as much if people felt listened to. And that last point is mostly directed at Gazebo.

Gazebo, you are doing a masterful job overall and sometimes people take stuff like that for granted. You are only human, and if people are being rude/ungrateful to you, I get that you can get hurt and therefore post something that is kind of defensive. In my opinion though I think you would benefit from being a bit more communicative. Obviously, time is a finite resource and time spent giving reasons to decisions is time not spent developing the game, but I think that is one reason why people have reacted badly to the 1 range archer change etc. I hope that you don't feel this is too harsh on you, just trying to help out a bit with what I observe (which of course might be wrong)

To Civplayer33 and Pineappledan: For strictly egoistical reasons I hope you guys come back, because you are contributing immensely to this community. If you feel that it is the right decisions for yourselves, then obviously we respect that You will be missed by everyone in this community if you do leave, though!

To all of us including myself: Let's try to actually be constructive and polite towards eachother, even if we disagree. Tone is a big deal, and a good tone with a bad message is more effective than a better message with bad tone if you want people to listen to you.

I'm guilty of brevity, namely because of the sheer number of responses I'm expected to make in a day. I do try to answer every question lobbed at me, and I am prone to the occasional snark. My bad. :/

G