New Beta Version - February 18th (2-18)

[SuperNoobCamper]

I'm not sure if this is something related to this version or even it belongs to this thread and i'm not sure if it's me not understanding the rules well or the combat damage calculator was behaving bizarrely in this case.
i have a full HP 13 horseman with Shock I attacking another 13 horseman with Shock I and Conscription lower in HP.
There is a GG stationed in the city of Warsaw 2 tiles away from my horseman before attacking giving my horseman +15% as shown in the screen shot but it's not actually calculated in the damage dealt making my horseman that should have +25% only get +10.
Does the GG have to be in 2 tiles range of the tile i'm attacking into, not just the tile where my unit is stationed ? is something newly changed, i don't remember it behaving this way at all ?

Spoiler :

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Also something I never noticed before. Great Admiral Healing also heals embarked units. Is that intended? I think its awesome, but wasn't sure.

They Civilopedia states it heals all naval and embarked units so i guess it's intended.

 

[randomnub]

Edit: I also adjusted the handicap method again, civs receive 1/2 bonus on capital found (was 1/3), and full bonus on 2+ city found (was 1/2).

G

Way better. Peaceful first 100 turns, I've been forward settled, only 4th in religion, # of techs and policies among AIs is pretty much the same except runaway progress Russia (but that's a given ). It looks like a promising game so I better play it some more

 

[Gidoza]

So after several plays with the experimental DLL, I do feel that the AI starts off slower on Immortal, especially with wonder production. However, they scale up just fine by the midgame, and the science runaways are crazy late game. Normally if I'm within a few techs of the AI by mid industrial I expect to be 10-15 techs behind by the time I get to early modern if they have focused on science (aka rationalism/order + GLF). So basically I have to destroy them at this point or they will tech me to oblivion.

I'm actually finding something similar (using Gazebo's first reduction in power change on page 6 or so). The AI sucked early on, did OK mid-game, and then he is magically catching up to me and surpassing me by turn 250 even when I had runaway status. This setup just seems weird.

 

[Stalker0]

Immortal Standard Speed Communitas_Tu. Game End (Quit) on Turn 298 (no CTDs the whole game!). Note, this is with the experimental AI that was posted.

Ultimately a runaway for the AI in this game. The Mayans now are 18 techs of me (as Russia). My last big water attack stalled out, as ironclads aren't cutting the mustard against Destroyers, Subs, and Carriers with bombers. The gap is just getting larger and larger so I think its time to call the ball. My notes:

1) I mentioned it earlier but for completeness. Overall I feel that the Immortal AI starts slower in terms of expansion and wonder building especially, but scales up a bit quicker, and is competitive by mid game. Then by end game its scales up very rapidly. The science scale especially is strong with Maya, I went from 3 techs behind to 18 in short order.

2) I've noticed the AI is using carriers more which is great to see. However, they are a bit too aggressive with them, and they leave them exposed. Carriers are pretty vulnerable, 3 shots from cruisers go often take them out.

3) Just noting on the happiness front, my civ is always always always bored out of their minds. This game I took fealty with -15% boredom reduction....and still bored. I'm really not sure what to do about that other than public works, as culture is a pretty limited resource for most cities. You can build a few buildings, but that's it. Personally I do not understand the comments that happiness is not a factor when playing wide, and I've been trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Happiness is always a factor for me on wide games, my happiness will commonly get into the 40s or 30s....and my local unhappiness is always lingering. Sure there are times when I can get it into the 70s or 80s...but it never lasts. My greatest concern is the notion that at its core, happiness is "rich get richer". If your doing well, happiness is high. If your not doing well, the happiness system kicks you a little harder...pushing you further down. I think happiness is appropriately penalizing early in the game, its later in the game that I start to worry if it doing its job "correctly".

4) Navalwise I've been a bit frustrated lately by the binary nature of naval combat. Sometimes I get into these "no win" situations where you cannot advance without losing ships. An example would be:

a) Melee naval can't get next to a city, as skirmisher units will rip it up.
b) Naval Ranged begins city or coastline bombardment.
c) City will use either a ship garrison or a produced ship to snipe one of my ships, as it doesn't have melee protection (generally happens once anti-warmonger gets high enough).

So my fleet either just sits outside of range and hangs out, or I commit to the engagement knowing I'm going to lose ships. Which is very dangerous, if your fleet starts to shrink, you can get absolutely crushed by a rebuilt AI fleet, or another AI that declares on you.

I think sometimes I just get very impatient with naval combat. I go into open water, see a monster fleet from the AI...have to run all the way back to my cities so I can soften up the fleet and then take it out. It just always feels that no matter how many ships I have, its never enough...I will lose some of them as I engage the enemy, and inevitably that new vulnerable costs me as the AI recovers.

I think I'm rambling a bit on this point, there's just something about naval combat right now that's irking me.

5) City Defense notes.

Most of the game I feel the CS numbers look good. I can't comment on the RCS numbers too much as apparently they are supposed to be static based on your defense buildings, but my garrisons absolutely are changing the numbers. I will say the damage my city has been doing I think is pretty reasonable, it hits harder enough to be useful, but I'm not sniping units with my city alone.

I do think defense starts to lag with ironclads. Even with armories an island city for example has a pretty low CS vs a series of naval ships, and it can be very hard to hold.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Personally I do not understand the comments that happiness is not a factor when playing wide, and I've been trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. My greatest concern is the notion that at its core, happiness is "rich get richer". If your doing well, happiness is high. If your not doing well, the happiness system kicks you a little harder...pushing you further down. I think happiness is appropriately penalizing early in the game, its later in the game that I start to worry if it doing its job "correctly".

I haven't played much standard wide lately (aside from full dom), but I'd have to agree. I've been stalled in my current progress game due to unhappiness, while only having a single war and vasssal, yet at this point in my last Japan game I was already basically wrapping up the victory without any real unhappiness issues due to me being in the driver's seat for techs/policies - I was indeed rich, and I kept getting richer.

I'm a lead advocate for feasible dom victories (I also realize these are the hardest to balance, and snowballing is in the nature of the game), but ironically there was way less internal push-back during my last game as a dominant warlord, than in my current game which has been relatively peaceful with good infrastructure throughout only 10 + 2 puppet cities - I have that damned 10% food sugar monopoly again + instant food from Ottoman UA, but my capital is only around the size of the other AI with tradition capitals, while my secondary cities are no bigger than 10/14 citizens through 250 turns, so it's not like I was massively overpopulated. This is why I was asking G if the AI performing better = my citizens would be unhappier due to needing increased yields from global averages.Though, this is a comparison using different versions; I'll play another few progress games before coming to any more conclusion.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Personally I do not understand the comments that happiness is not a factor when playing wide, and I've been trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Happiness is always a factor for me on wide games, my happiness will commonly get into the 40s or 30s....and my local unhappiness is always lingering. Sure there are times when I can get it into the 70s or 80s...but it never lasts.

I would be very interested to see some screenshots of your game. I've found happiness to be an issue earlier on, but not so much of one over time. Do you favour particular policies (apart from Progress) or particular civs? What do your relationships with AIs tend to be, and how much importance do you put on city-state alliances? The other thing I would ask is how soon, and how rapidly you expand.

I suspect that my high happiness is probably in part due to meeting and befriending AIs and city-states early on, and being a compulsive trader and quest-completer.

 

[Stalker0]

Kicked off another game on Immortal with the latest version (I think its 3b). AI founded Stonehenge on Turn 22. I'm going pyramids with an awesome start (got a pop from the ruin, got 2 lake tiles and 2 1f 2p tiles for building....and best I can squeeze out is turn 25.

Also Siam beat me on its first city even though I've got the pyramids. This is the kind of snowball that bothers me, I would much rather have a slower AI that ramps up quicker, but these are strong bonus so early in the game.

 

[Stalker0]

I would be very interested to see some screenshots of your game. I've found happiness to be an issue earlier on, but not so much of one over time. Do you favour particular policies (apart from Progress) or particular civs? What do your relationships with AIs tend to be, and how much importance do you put on city-state alliances? I suspect that my high happiness is probably in part due to meeting and befriending AIs and city-states early on, and being a compulsive trader and quest-completer.

Maybe its time I do just that. I play progress a lot lately just because I'm working on my wide play. That generally moves into either statecraft or fealty depending on what I'm doing. I also place a heavy focus on CS...what I find is that early on I have no trouble securing alliances. And then the AI kicks it in gear, and starts eroding my alliances and friendships with lots of GD hits. At that point I focus on maintaining friendships, but its too costly to go for alliances (700 influence is like 8 diplomats). I will get spheres if I have the votes to push them, or I will go open doors to ensure no one gets the alliance if I can't.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Maybe its time I do just that. I play progress a lot lately just because I'm working on my wide play. That generally moves into either statecraft or fealty depending on what I'm doing. I also place a heavy focus on CS...what I find is that early on I have no trouble securing alliances. And then the AI kicks it in gear, and starts eroding my alliances and friendships with lots of GD hits. At that point I focus on maintaining friendships, but its too costly to go for alliances (700 influence is like 8 diplomats). I will get spheres if I have the votes to push them, or I will go open doors to ensure no one gets the alliance if I can't.

Sounds like your diplomacy play is pretty solid. It occurs that Immortal on this patch is a pretty serious challenge in itself. Tbh if I was playing on that difficulty on this beta I doubt happiness would be the only thing I struggle to keep up with.

Edit: oh, also Artistry may help you with happiness more than the other 2nd tier policy trees? Depends on the circumstances of course, but it's worked well for me.

 

[RyesDaile]

First time on this version. Installed the 2-18-3b file, but I just had a CTD on Turn 73.

 

[Gazebo]

CTDs need to go to github. Team is currently having a hard time diagnosing this one.

G

 

[andersw]

Maybe its time I do just that. I play progress a lot lately just because I'm working on my wide play. That generally moves into either statecraft or fealty depending on what I'm doing. I also place a heavy focus on CS...what I find is that early on I have no trouble securing alliances. And then the AI kicks it in gear, and starts eroding my alliances and friendships with lots of GD hits. At that point I focus on maintaining friendships, but its too costly to go for alliances (700 influence is like 8 diplomats). I will get spheres if I have the votes to push them, or I will go open doors to ensure no one gets the alliance if I can't.

I think you play one or two higher than me but ... I found that when comparing wide authority -> fealty with authority -> statecraft I get so much more happiness with statecraft.
The more I've played statecraft the more op I think it is, ofc if you in the late game get diplo shafted things can get worse.

 

[andersw]

2-18-3b
CTD at t163

Same here T105, logs are up on Github.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I think you play one or two higher than me but ... I found that when comparing wide authority -> fealty with authority -> statecraft I get so much more happiness with statecraft.
The more I've played statecraft the more op I think it is, ofc if you in the late game get diplo shafted things can get worse.

I have a fur monopoly and I'm running statecraft with several allied CS, with at least 2 giving me bonus happiness outright, yet I'm still having trouble in my current game. I'll see how much it improves once I take my 3rd policy opener.

I agree with you though, statecraft on paper seems op; I haven't played enough recent diplo games to judge it thoroughly enough.

 

[JamesNinelives]

@CrazyG would you be more satisfied if the pasture pantheon was weaker but early pastures were a bit stronger? Question applies to all but I figure I should reference the original concern.
G

Part of the issue I have is that yields on 2 grassland or 2 plains is annoying micro if I want to get the full benefit from it. It adds an extra priority that I have to consider when choosing what tiles to work that doesn't synergise particularly well with any of my other priorities. That one of the resources this pantheon buffs (sheep) only spawns on hills doesn't help.

The other issue I have with Open Sky is that pastures are not very interesting. They only improve three resources - two bonus resources and one strategic. Compare that to the other improvement types, which all improve luxury resources, bonus resources, and sometimes strategics as well. Having pastures as the main source of faith is good in that it makes pastures better, which is great! But the situation that it rewards (having lots of pastures) is just not that exciting because that can mean you have nothing more notable around you than a bunch of bonus resources and maybe a strategic or two. Why not take a pantheon that focuses on your monopoly resource, or your civ's uniques instead?

I would also like this pantheon more if it gave more yields that aren't gold. Food or production make more sense to me if we're talking about either a) roaming herds, wild horses and a nomadic lifestyle (be it Mongolian, Australian or American), or b) cowboys out on the range, herding sheep with sheepdogs, and cattle ranches. That's what 'open sky' brings to mind for me.

Open Sky and Fealty granting on gold pastures makes it a very generic improvement - the yields are split between three different things rather than having a primary focus. Normally I'm very much in favour of diverse yields but in the case of Pastures I feel that it would help to have a clearer theme as to what they do. What if Open Sky gave +1/+1 per two worked plains/grassland tiles and +1/+1 on pastures?

 

[JamesNinelives]

I have a fur monopoly and I'm running statecraft with several allied CS, with at least 2 giving me bonus happiness outright, yet I'm still having trouble in my current game. I'll see how much it improves once I take my 3rd policy opener.

I agree with you though, statecraft on paper seems op; I haven't played enough recent diplo games to judge it thoroughly enough.

What difficulty are you playing on in that game?

 

[CrazyG]

@CrazyG would you be more satisfied if the pasture pantheon was weaker but early pastures were a bit stronger? Question applies to all but I figure I should reference the original concern.

G

I personally think the forge should only give +1 hammer to mines. If that isn't popular, then buff sheep. Cows are fine.

The pasture pantheon is a separate issue in my view. The currrent version is crazy good. Instead of adding faith to the grassland/plains pairs, you should add something else. So like +1 faith, +3 gold to pastures and bison. That's pretty thematic and the terrain with pastures is fairly likely to have bison.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

What difficulty are you playing on in that game?

Emperor with Recursive's dll.

I initially had 7 cities, but moved to 10 after taking the Dutch capital and puppeting two of his other cities. I waited a good while before expanding with 2 more pioneers on an empty neighboring continent that China was beginning to colonize first; she seems fine with having almost as many cities utilizing tradition / artistry. Like I'd mentioned, I'm a couple turns away from selecting my 3rd policy tree so we'll see how the rest of the game goes (I'm leaning Imperialism due to inevitable war with China + Ottoman kit has me geared for war while my Janissary are still relevant).

I'm playing against some culture-heavy civs right now (India, Siam, China, Ethiopia, Japan, Dutch, Tlingit), so I'm lagging a bit on policies considering where I'm sitting in score, but otherwise my infrastructure and tech level is solid.

 

[CrazyG]

I have feedback about the early game, newest hot fix.

Deity is hard, you can't play peacefully and keep up in culture. This is good, its supposed to be hard. However if you go to war the early game is stupidly easy. Cities are way too weak. One hoplite without promotions can solo a city with an archer inside, taking only 50 damage in the process. I think two is enough to beat a capital with an archer inside. After getting drill II from killing barbarians I hit cities for more than 150. You probably don't even need hoplites, I think 3 or 4 spearmen would easily knock down any civ without a UU.

Persia's immortals could slow me down (always cool when hoplites face down immortals), but I actually just ignored them and hit his cities. They just collapse basically instantly. I deal more to an immortal in a city than I do attacking an immortal on flat ground.

Shock's flanking bonus does almost nothing. Shock II compared to drill II, with 3 flanking units, is 34 damage for shock, 33 for drill.