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

[JamesNinelives]

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.

I like the idea of open sky applying to Bison.

The current camp improvement pantheon (Hunt) seems best for Tundra starts (which is fine).

 

[Voremonger]

Regarding Happiness:
I played relatively long game on the last patch where I gave the AI larger starting bonuses (difficulty was Immortal).
I was playing as a wide warmonger.
By the Modern Era Happiness was a major concern (I had ~25 Cities).
Even in Cities where I had every building available to me built I would have gotten the full 1 Unhappiness per Citizen if I had not built a lot of Public Works.

Assuming the wiki page for Happiness is up-to-date the main reason was probably that I had a lot of Cities and that I was behind technologically.
I think the current version of Public Works is also too weak, at least if you're going to use it as it was probably intended (I'm assuming the intended use is to build it a few times in every City if you are struggling with Happiness).

The total amount of production you need to invest into Public Works scales quadratically with how many times you've built it, presumably to give it diminishing returns.
However, at the same time you will only start to get any payoff at all once you've built it a lot of times if the needs of your Citizens are much higher than the City Yields (they were in my case).
For example, after annexing Venice and building all relevant buildings the needs of the City were 4 times higher than the City Yields; I didn't even bother to build Public Works in that case because I would have needed to build it at least 7 times in order to get any benefits at all.
Instead I just ignored Public Works in part of my Cities and spammed it in other Cities.
As a result I would get some Cities with the maximum amount of Unhappiness and some Cities with basically no Unhappiness at all; As long as my average Happiness was >50% it was not a problem.

I think Public Works would be in a better spot if it gave you 1 empire-wide Happiness instead of 1 local Happiness.
That would make it so that Public Works always gives you some benefit because the Happiness wouldn't get swallowed up due to a large deficit in City Yields.

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.

I think there are 3 problems with naval combat as of right now:

1. An attack force consisting of just Naval Units is basically useless against continental coastal Cities. I think you need to combine your Naval Units with Land Units to get anywhere because reliably killing Land Units with Naval Units is impossible. You also can't use Naval Units to pillage enemy Roads. Even if the attacker manages to take a City with Naval Units they will almost always not be able to hold it against Land Units.
   
2. Numerical advantages/disadvantages play a much bigger role in naval combat than they do with land combat. Naval Units are much faster than Land Units and they never have to face rough terrain. As a consequence Naval Units can gang up on each other much easier than Land Units and the party with more Units will have a much easier time making use of all of their Units to attack the enemy. The AI of course has a very large numerical advantage on high difficulty levels.
3. Naval combat is much more deadly than land combat (both because of the higher mobility mentioned above and due to healing restrictions). In order to not lose ships you'd have to either be playing super safe or you'd have to be winning extremely hard. An AI player can afford to lose a large part of their ships, a human player can't.

For me the above three factors usually make me neglect offensive naval combat until I've managed to snowball through land combat.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

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.

I agree, city CS is laughable, the damage from city attacks seem OK.
My strategy was to rush Mathematics and it worked too, 4 composite bowman and a skirmisher were able to take down a city with walls and melee unit in it by 5/6 turns, no siege units necessary.

 

[Mambo668]

I agree, city CS is laughable, the damage from city attacks seem OK.
My strategy was to rush Mathematics and it worked too, 4 composite bowman and a skirmisher were able to take down a city with walls and melee unit in it by 5/6 turns, no siege units necessary.

Was there any defenders or just sitting ducks? AI is still that soft in this new version? In my game immortall standard originall february 18th version one civ china snowballs really heavy in tech and culture. She has 2,5x more points than me. Rest 6 AI
looks like a joke in numbers. Low pop, really low army numbers (seeing it with my scouts).

 

[JamesNinelives]

I think the current version of Public Works is also too weak, at least if you're going to use it as it was probably intended (I'm assuming the intended use is to build it a few times in every City if you are struggling with Happiness).

I don't think Public Works are intended to be a core part of game strategy. If I remember correctly is was introduced as an emergency measure so that if you were spiralling downwards you could divert your resources somewhat which would halt or ameliorate that. I don't tend to go domination, but if you need to build that many public works your unhappiness seems way too high IMO :|.

By the Modern Era Happiness was a major concern (I had ~25 Cities).

25 is a lot of cities. What map size are you playing on? Do you have any puppet cities?

 

[azum4roll]

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.

I think +1 faith, +3 gold to pastures and +1 culture to every 2 featureless grassland/plains tiles worked by the city (removed non-hill requirement) is good enough. I think pantheons can't improve just bison camps? Has to be either all bison tiles or all camps.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Was there any defenders or just sitting ducks? AI is still that soft in this new version? In my game immortall standard originall february 18th version one civ china snowballs really heavy in tech and culture. She has 2,5x more points than me. Rest 6 AI
looks like a joke in numbers. Low pop, really low army numbers (seeing it with my scouts).

I decided to try early warfare myself and spears and archers did just fine taking cities, including the Greek capital. Mainly just by force of numbers. The greeks were defending with warriors and archers. This was on Emperor difficulty using the version G posted most recently (1/2 and full on settling cities). Also on Epic speed which makes things easier of course. Checking now America has nine techs (same as me) and 3 policies in Authority. Other AIs are pretty much the same.

Spoiler Screenshot :

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Playing the 18-2 patch with full settling bonuses on all cities Emperor Standard size Epic Speed Commnitas Map Terra start as Poland.
I like how the AI starts are actually good this version, they make the early game really togh even on emperor but they really start to fall behind in the medieval without conquests
The bonuses seem to help them in the early game but they have to continuously settle cities to get it which is not ideal.
Getting early game wonders is really tough tho, getting forward settled is just part of the game now & wonder spammers are more noticeable this beta and early game warfare if you are close to an aggressive AI is actually really tough.
Also i noticed they don't protect their settlers ... thanks for the free worker, Queen

Spoiler :

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[andersw]

I don't think Public Works are intended to be a core part of game strategy. If I remember correctly is was introduced as an emergency measure so that if you were spiralling downwards you could divert your resources somewhat which would halt or ameliorate that. I don't tend to go domination, but if you need to build that many public works your unhappiness seems way too high IMO :|.


25 is a lot of cities. What map size are you playing on? Do you have any puppet cities?

Thats been my situation for quite some time if I go auth/fealty -> domination, at around 20-25 cities there are a lot of work to keep happiness above the 35 threshold and I spam public works but not sure if it makes much difference.
Now that IS a lot of cities but after playing more auth/statecraft those games dont have nearly as much happiness issues, that ofc rely on me actually keeping cs allies.

 

[Phosphoraptor]

Played a game till industrial era. Having overwhelming unhappiness problems with contemporary buildings but no public works. Gave up after failing to catch up in techs,policies and spiraling into deep unhappiness even without war weariness. Took a pic of the tech leaders cap for reference.

Is just me or is unhappiness much harder to manage in the late game? How could I have done this better?

Spoiler Screenshots after retire :

 

[Voremonger]

I don't think Public Works are intended to be a core part of game strategy. If I remember correctly is was introduced as an emergency measure so that if you were spiralling downwards you could divert your resources somewhat which would halt or ameliorate that.

My experience so far has been that building Public Works is basically mandatory if you go for wide Domination on high difficulty levels.
One you reach the Industrial Era or so the yields required to keep your Cities happy begin to vastly outscale the actual yields.

25 is a lot of cities. What map size are you playing on? Do you have any puppet cities?

I was playing on Communitas, standard size, with players starting everywhere.
In that particular game I actually did not puppet any of the Cities I conquered.

To be clear: when I'm saying that Happiness was a major concern I am not saying that I had a major problem with Happiness.
I was playing as the Celts with Dagda the All-Father (+2 Happiness from Ceilidh Hall).
I was able to stay at ~55% Happiness by building Public Works in select Cities, but this required careful planning (I had to plan ~50 turns ahead and use production ITRs).
I am mostly bringing this up because I think that Public Works is not good enough to fulfill its purpose when you are already struggling from Unhappiness due to yield deficits.
I think the delay from when you start building Public Works to when you start to get any benefits is just too long.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I cannot remember the last time i had an issue with late game happiness ..... i usually play a very wide warmonger and i don't really know if it's even possible to get below 50% unless i go into a prolonged war that i refuse making peace
In my experience happiness is strictly an early game issue, it becomes pretty much non existent after medieval/renaissance if you manage to build a reasonable infrastructre for your core cities.
In my warmonger games i usually go Progress>Fealty>Imperialism or Industry Spoiler alert : rationalism is for tradition losers; The happiness from fealty castles & -1 from urbanization makes a big difference mid game, progress is a generalist's favorite policy : it does not do any thing particularly better than tradition or authority but it's very consistent and IMO still better than authority for a mid game warmonger.
EDIT : On pantheons : I think open sky is actually a very good pantheon as it is, not sure if the recent buff was even necessary still it made founding a religion a lot easier .... it's pretty much a +2 in every city if you don't mind playing the game optimally and micro manage your cities .... the core issue is Sheep; not cows or horses.
Sheep seem to be one of the worst tiles to work the entire game, really low impact early game, pretty much non existent starting in the medieval era; i'm not going to work a 2 ,2, 1 tile any time ... if i'm building a settler i'd rather work a mine, if i'm trying to grow my city to get 4 pop i'd rather work a 31 plains farm or ever a 4 grassland farm.
The worst thing about sheep is how it breaks open sky 2 tiles bonuses as it always spawns on hills ... it always ends up as a GPTI for me for a +1 on a hill tile unless i'm playing Poland, Ducal stable baby!.
I think open sky should stay as is and just number adjustment for improved sheep tiles.

 

[andersw]

My experience so far has been that building Public Works is basically mandatory if you go for wide Domination on high difficulty levels.
One you reach the Industrial Era or so the yields required to keep your Cities happy begin to vastly outscale the actual yields.

Yes Industrial is rough, since its war I probably want to go for rifling but I then have to do all I can to get archeology and start digging sites asap for happiness.
Neuschwanstein is also very important since everything already have castles at this point.
These are not to get above 50, this is just to keep my nose above the water.
But maybe I'm conquering cities too fast/easy but a slower capture rate/wars builds up more war weariness and more unhappy that way.

 

[Stalker0]

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.

Are your units actually counting as flanking? (aka the enemy doesn't also have flanking that's cancelling out yours). You should be getting an extra +30% CS in that scenario, which is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[CrazyG]

Are your units actually counting as flanking? (aka the enemy doesn't also have flanking that's cancelling out yours). You should be getting an extra +30% CS in that scenario, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Yes, flanking is adding damage, but it adds about the same with or without shock.

With equal flanking, a drill 2 hoplite gets 33 damage.
A shock 2 hoplites gets 34 damage.

That makes me think the 5% bonus on shock isn't very good.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes, flanking is adding damage, but it adds about the same with or without shock.

With equal flanking, a drill 2 hoplite gets 33 damage.
A shock 2 hoplites gets 34 damage.

That makes me think the 5% bonus on shock isn't very good.

I'm guessing there is a problem with the combat calculation (if I don't find at least 2 combat calc issues a version I haven't met my quota

If a 30% CS bonus isn't doing anything for you, than the problem is not shock

 

[CrazyG]

If a 30% CS bonus isn't doing anything for you, than the problem is not shock

That 30% exists regardless of promotions. I'm not saying the concept of flanking is weak. I'm saying shock seems weak compared to drill.

 

[Gazebo]

Flanking is a delta of units, btw: if you have 3 units surrounding their 2, you only get '1' flanking bonus.

G

 

[Recursive]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...d-bug-reports-to-github.655371/#post-15681894

For anyone who is confused on how to submit bug reports to Github or find logs/other files, I have written up a tutorial in this post.

 

[Gazebo]

Re: early city strength, rather than buffing the starting CS, I think I'd rather buff the starting HP. It's more 'enjoyable' to smack a city for tons of damage (and take just a little in return) than to feel like you are fighting an 'equal' foe in a bunch of inanimate buildings.