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

[General_Drax]

Archers to range 1 is an earthquake over VP. Still need testing, gameplay wise. In ancient history archers were not the bulk of the army just some flimsy support corp.

Footmen, pikemens than cavalry shaped the ancient wars. Egypt, Greece, Rome just to name a few.

Now I'm finding impossible conquer and raze a city to get a starter good peace treaty with warriors and spearmen alone. AI's got more time to develop. I'm playing only Authority game just now to test the new balance on Emperor (and all AIs seems to prefer Tradition/Progress now, even Denmark).

 

[CrazyG]

2 range is uniquely powerful in the ancient era because it is unanswerable, particularly with the archer's placement in the tech tree relative to the warmonger sections of the tree.

By unanswerable, do you mean cities can't answer it? Spearmen or horsemen answer it the same way tercio or knights answer 2 range units.

The only dynamic that changes between the ancient era and classical era is the range of cities. I really don't see how cities starting at 1-range is AI-friendly at all. They basically never rush early enough to take advantage of it, but humans can use it to grief the AI. This patch you can still chariot rush pre-walls, the same way you used to archer rush, if the terrain is reasonable.

 

[PapaRockett]

I think city states are getting embassies when a player improves their luxury resource through diplomatic actions...

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I think city states are getting embassies when a player improves their luxury resource through diplomatic actions...

I have seen multiple CS with multiple embassies this patch.

 

[Voremonger]

I'm not sure why that would be so? Giving cities range 2 from the start only hurts units attacking from 2 tiles away, i.e. only archers and chariots (in the ancient era). It doesn't hurt other ancient units?

The range of Cities is very relevant for Melee Units.
Melee Units need to move right next to a City and then at some point pull out again to heal up.
If Cities only have 1 range you can always get out of a City's attack range in just one turn.
If Cities have 2 range you have to spend more time moving your Melee Units back and forth and less time actually attacking the City, thus reducing the average damage per turn you are dealing.

 

[Cokolwiek]

Has anything been done with phony wars and DiPlOmAcY? AIs still are brutally peaceful towards each other, even warmongers, no cities taken and no DoWs for most of them, while they ganged up on me, even when I was not a leader in anything and declared war myself only once. Of course powerful Huns, who conquered much more and about before everyone was asking me to go for war with him, now have defensive pacts with half of the world. And no one bats an eye, even when he is the real menace with cities six tiles from their capitals and long borders. Of course I am on the other side of the world with no borders with civilizations which declare on me. Just like Acaerus I had normal diplomacy which recognized friend from foe in its national interest department before updating.

Hmm... it was all ok with 2-9-2b with diplomacy, i had enemies, i had neutrals and i had friends amongst the AI. 10 turns after i installed 2-9-3b all AIs are denounced me and now i suddenly in war with all the world without any doing from my part... So either there is some bug in 2-9-3b or nothing is changed from previous AI hive mind...

If not is there a way to disable competition penalty and thus achieve more realistic AI behavior?

Several things I found this playthrough:
Grocery still have banana, but bananas are displayed for Customs house info. Needs a clearup.
I dont know if that was a case before. I have city beside the grand mesa and every unit from every city gets altitude training. If this is intended it should be nerfed to the ground, e.g. Only units from this city

 

[JamesNinelives]

I dont know if that was a case before. I have city beside the grand mesa and every unit from every city gets altitude training. If this is intended it should be nerfed to the ground, e.g. Only units from this city

Do you mean Kilimanjaro? To my understanding that is as intended. The Fountain of Youth also grants a promotion that works in the same way. Don't know how other people feel about it, but it seems fine to me given that natural wonders are pretty rare.

 

[HungryForFood]

The range of Cities is very relevant for Melee Units.
Melee Units need to move right next to a City and then at some point pull out again to heal up.
If Cities only have 1 range you can always get out of a City's attack range in just one turn.
If Cities have 2 range you have to spend more time moving your Melee Units back and forth and less time actually attacking the City, thus reducing the average damage per turn you are dealing.

But why is this an issue in ancient, not classical? Cities go down fast before walls anyway.

 

[Cokolwiek]

Do you mean Kilimanjaro? To my understanding that is as intended. The Fountain of Youth also grants a promotion that works in the same way. Don't know how other people feel about it, but it seems fine to me given that natural wonders are pretty rare.

No, it is Grand Mesa. It is automatic overkill with warmonger game, cause it gives your 40/50 units in renaissance double movement in hills, no matter what features on them, e.g. forested hills, which allows you to shuffle your troops brutally effective, taking literally no casualties, and places your cavalry and ranged units in spot to traverse, hit they way AI can't.
It is a very powerful bonus but it would be balanced enough when contained only with units from this one city. It would be also more realistic. How units from the other side of continent, thousands of miles away, born, bred, trained in different environment should be able to get them.

 

[civplayer33]

No, it is Grand Mesa. It is automatic overkill with warmonger game, cause it gives your 40/50 units in renaissance double movement in hills, no matter what features on them, e.g. forested hills, which allows you to shuffle your troops brutally effective, taking literally no casualties, and places your cavalry and ranged units in spot to traverse, hit they way AI can't.
It is a very powerful bonus but it would be balanced enough when contained only with units from this one city. It would be also more realistic. How units from the other side of continent, thousands of miles away, born, bred, trained in different environment should be able to get them.

I don't think you should be getting it from Grand Mesa, but the reason this was changed from the way it previously worked (where you had to send every unit next to the natural wonder to receive the promotion) was that it was very AI unfriendly...the human could very efficiently "train" his entire army by managing the logistics, including proper City placement, such that he could quickly send new units to the Wonder, but the AI is not so clever at this; that's why it was changed so all units belonging to the player who has access to the wonder will just get the promo.

 

[Cokolwiek]

I don't think you should be getting it from Grand Mesa, but the reason this was changed from the way it previously worked (where you had to send every unit next to the natural wonder to receive the promotion) was that it was very AI unfriendly...the human could very efficiently "train" his entire army by managing the logistics, including proper City placement, such that he could quickly send new units to the Wonder, but the AI is not so clever at this; that's why it was changed so all units belonging to the player who has access to the wonder will just get the promo.

Well, it is Kilimanjaro. I was misled by my native city beside Mesa, and one of the conquered ones was by Mt. K. Thank you for pointing that out.
This argumentation is very convincing, and I love VP community for balancing everything to be AI-obtainable in order to achieve really engaging and competetive play, but I consider it still an OP bonus, especially in the hands of warmongering player.
I urge you to consider either"
1. old system - in warmongering games it would be super tedious dancing on the whole map with units toi reach the wonder, and those games are already quite an ordeal when it comes to giving orders to your units to move around the map. It wouldn't be ai friendly but taking advantage would be at the player discretion also - and it would come at a price of being a cheater and having to circle your units. In the current system players are granted all that advantage without any effort and are basically forced to use it. I think we also all agree that tactical advantage of bonus movement are scaling much better in the hands of the player who obviously can utilise it better, so it really isn't as much ai friendly as it seems
2. only units from this city both for the AI and player, the most reasonable one
3. elimination of the bonus altogether, scaling culture is really powerful in itself

 

[DeAnno]

Perhaps the Kilimanjaro bonus could be scaled back from a movement advantage to a combat bonus in hills to be more reasonable while keeping the same flavor and AI friendliness.

Also, I noticed the Embassy thing after getting my first Great Diplomat in a recent game. It was pretty funny to look at 2 CSes next to each other with 5 embassies between them.

 

[kenneth1221]

1. old system - in warmongering games it would be super tedious dancing on the whole map with units toi reach the wonder, and those games are already quite an ordeal when it comes to giving orders to your units to move around the map. It wouldn't be ai friendly but taking advantage would be at the player discretion also - and it would come at a price of being a cheater and having to circle your units. In the current system players are granted all that advantage without any effort and are basically forced to use it. I think we also all agree that tactical advantage of bonus movement are scaling much better in the hands of the player who obviously can utilise it better, so it really isn't as much ai friendly as it seems

The balance overhaul has made extensive improvements to AI.

2. only units from this city both for the AI and player, the most reasonable one

Still highly benefits the player, who knows to focus all their unit production in 1 city where the AI doesn't.

3. elimination of the bonus altogether, scaling culture is really powerful in itself

This suggestion would destroy the flavor of Kilimanjaro. How familiar are you with the internal balancing of VP? The scaling of everything is quite different from BNW. I don't want to "pull rank" in an obnoxious way, but since you only have 5 posts on this forum it would help your credibility if you could give an idea of how much you've played VP.

Perhaps the Kilimanjaro bonus could be scaled back from a movement advantage to a combat bonus in hills to be more reasonable while keeping the same flavor and AI friendliness.

Pls no. at that point why even bother giving a promotion from the natural wonder at all, if it's just another generic +33% combat strength in hills?

 

[civplayer33]

1. old system - in warmongering games it would be super tedious dancing on the whole map with units toi reach the wonder, and those games are already quite an ordeal when it comes to giving orders to your units to move around the map. It wouldn't be ai friendly but taking advantage would be at the player discretion also - and it would come at a price of being a cheater and having to circle your units. In the current system players are granted all that advantage without any effort and are basically forced to use it. I think we also all agree that tactical advantage of bonus movement are scaling much better in the hands of the player who obviously can utilise it better, so it really isn't as much ai friendly as it seems

The new system is more AI-friendly than the old one; just because it isn't perfectly AI-friendly doesn't mean we need to go back to the worse one. Also, I don't think that the Hill-movement bonus is necessarily better in player hands...the player is better at using terrain for good tactical positioning, which is one reason why you can hold off a large AI army with relatively few units if you have some "help" from the terrain but you can't really do that with navies, because there is very little "terrain" there (only the restriction that comes from land constraining the amount of water tiles). So I would argue that the Hill-movement bonus actually buffs the AI more than it buffs the player, relative to what they can achieve without it. That is not to say, however, that it serves as any sort of equalizer; the AI has seen significant improvements, but the player is obviously still able to beat it strategically and tactically, because the AI is working off of scripted algorithms instead of having an actual intellect.

2. only units from this city both for the AI and player, the most reasonable one

As @kenneth1221 correctly points out, that would actually be less AI-friendly.

Also, I personally like the way it currently works and I'll have you know that I have even more posts than kenneth, which is, of course, my most important argument

 

[kenneth1221]

Also, I personally like the way it currently works and I'll have you know that I have even more posts than kenneth, which is, of course, my most important argument

Hey, I'm well aware I look like a **** for using that argument -- but I'd look just as obnoxious if I'd outright asked "how much have you played the game" without giving a reason why

 

[PapaRockett]

Is Espionage really slow for anyone else? We all just got our first spy in my game. Taking 130+ turns to steal a tech from Babylon.

 

[Gazebo]

G I don't want to dismiss your experience lightly, but this seems pretty condescending. If the game isn't fun for a lot of people, that seems like there's an issue to be addressed.

I'm not saying we should just drop this change without testing it. I intent to give it a try before I give my view on the subject.

I don't think this is something that is just going to go away though. Whether or not the change is good for balance, I think it's important that people feel their experiences playtesting are being taken into account. If the community doesn't feel it is being listened to, that creates resentment and can make it difficult to discuss the subject - or to let it go.

Wasn't trying to be condescending - my point was that some playtesting will have players get used to the 'shock' of it being range 1, so we can actually see if it shakes up early war. Not that the change is permanent, but that the knee-jerk reaction is impermanent.

Given that you did not test any of the other proposed changes (weakening RCS, malus towards cities) before fundamentally changing the mechanic - 2 range - you'll have to get used to those of us who hate it continuing to vocally state it and request testing the alternative.

I didn't just propose reducing the archer's power towards cities, I also proposed doing so in general. Would a 6/5 archer with a malus towards cities result in humans exclusively building archers? A 6/4 archer? I don't think so.

That wasn't tested. You just made the change. Despite a vocal segment of players protesting it. Fine. You're the man when it comes to Vox Populi. But it's not a universally popular decision and I'm not just going to shut up about it.

You don't know what I did and did not test, and I would advise against assuming what I've done.

By unanswerable, do you mean cities can't answer it? Spearmen or horsemen answer it the same way tercio or knights answer 2 range units.

The only dynamic that changes between the ancient era and classical era is the range of cities. I really don't see how cities starting at 1-range is AI-friendly at all. They basically never rush early enough to take advantage of it, but humans can use it to grief the AI. This patch you can still chariot rush pre-walls, the same way you used to archer rush, if the terrain is reasonable.

Yes, but even beyond that, archer placement in the tech tree creates a dynamic in which the strongest ancient era unit is available with minimal effort.

IMO, it is far more thematic and 'interesting' for the ancient era to be a melee-centric era. It is a brief but dangerous window in which war is visceral and close, with clubs, spears, and hand-axes.

I think reducing archer hammer cost to that of warriors would solidly place them in the 'chaff' role they deserve in the ancient era, and would open up some new strategies in the ancient era for rushes.

As others, including you, have said, reducing archer RCS but keeping them at range 2 simply extends the duration of a siege, but doesn't alter the outcome. I'm reluctant to change cities back to range 2 because, as noted above, I think it opens up a unique window for early conquest. And yes, the AI does use it, I've seen it multiple times.

This isn't a permanent change, but I think it is a more flexible one than altering city range or tweaking numbers.

G

 

[Gazebo]

Is Espionage really slow for anyone else? We all just got our first spy in my game. Taking 130+ turns to steal a tech from Babylon.

Does he have spies?

G

 

[Gazebo]

Unless you nerfed them to where they did so little damage to a city that it wouldn't matter...than such a nerf wouldn't help. Even if there damage was halved, the ability to pound a city with 4 archers with no retaliation is just too good...especially once they got through the garrison.

There is an archer nerf to city that would likely do the trick, but its not -25%....its probably more like -66%.

Ultimately I still think range is the better approach...where its 1 range archers or 2 range cities...that is the better vehicle to the stop the problem.

Tried to replicate the garrison RCS bug you thought you saw, but I can't - can you make a github post so I can replicate?

G

 

[Voremonger]

But why is this an issue in ancient, not classical? Cities go down fast before walls anyway.

Because wars play out very differently in the Ancient Era and the Classical Era; The optimal strategies for winning an offensive war are different.
In the Classical Era you have access to basically all unit types and I think the best strategy is to use a mixed army.
However, in the Ancient Era you only have access to a limited selection of unit types.
And because of this I think that the strategy of rushing the Technology for a single Unit and then building an army consisting of mostly that unit is relatively strong in the Ancient Era.
Also, in the Ancient Era speed is really important: if you can pump out an army before the enemy has Walls, Horsemen, etc. it will greatly increase the likelihood of success.
The problem with Archers was that they were universally strong (only really weak against Horsemen) and available very early compared to other Units.