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

[Recursive]

Hey, love the mod and appreciate all the work that's gone into it.

Has anyone else been getting constant crashes with the new patch? Around turn 60 or so in every game I've played on this version (5 or 6 times so far), the game will close for no apparent reason. It's not hanging and stopping responding so much as alt-f4ing itself suddenly. I've tried different settings and such and disabled all mods besides the VP ones but it keeps happening.

Not sure if this is worth submitting a bug report over or not but I'd be happy to do one if so.

Crashes are always worth reporting.

 

[PapaRockett]

Hmm, are the AI handicaps the side effect that's causing me to have massive happiness issues? Global median or whatever

Struggling in all areas (boredom, poverty, illiteracy) can't say it's fun if that's the case

 

[SupremoBean]

Crashes are always worth reporting.

Alright, I'll get on it.

 

[andersw]

Crashes are always worth reporting.

I also get recurring crash in the early game that I can't get past, but will clear cache and test a new game.
Looks scary now, AI got their first 3 cities a bit fast.

 

[Balint2]

- Completing a trade route to a major civ

This seems to make ITRs much worse for the AI compared to ETRs.
Shouldnt the AI receive some of these bonuses for completing an ITR too? Like 1/2 of those yields or stg?

 

[Recursive]

Could someone please help me and tell me which line(s) of code should I change in my local files to stop the AI from getting the bonuses from settling their capital? Thank you!

Balance aside, here is why I dislike the AI bonuses on Turn 1 (aka when they city settle). I feel like its the opposite problem of the Archer Rush.

To me, human vs AI is a competition of a human's superior tactics/optimizations vs the AI's bonuses. When the AI's bonus are ramping up in the mid game, it is up to me to have developed a superior strategy, warfare tactics, and build order optimization in order to counter. A "fair" fight.

The archer rush was so abusive because it allowed the human to flex its tactical superiority before the AI bonuses kicked in...an unfair fight.

Likewise, the AI getting bonuses on Turn 1 allows them to start a snowball effect before I have had a chance to utilize my optimizations. It gives them incredible advantages in forward settling, religion, and early wonder production...and that early in the game there isn't that much I can do to counter. Again, an "unfair fight".

Its similar to how I feel about the AI getting free promotions (generally fair, a compensation vs my superior warfare tactics) vs AI pathfinders getting promotions on turn 1 (unfair, ability to scout the map and take ruins before I could possibly counter).

Here you go, this DLL is identical to the current one, except that the AI doesn't receive a bonus from settling its capital (I changed one line to re-add the "!isCapital()" check).

Just make sure to mention that you're using it if you're giving feedback.

 

[Bromar1]

The current iteration generates more variability.

G

Variability is great for some things but is that what we want for the difficulty curve?

 

[Gidoza]

Balance aside, here is why I dislike the AI bonuses on Turn 1 (aka when they city settle). I feel like its the opposite problem of the Archer Rush.

To me, human vs AI is a competition of a human's superior tactics/optimizations vs the AI's bonuses. When the AI's bonus are ramping up in the mid game, it is up to me to have developed a superior strategy, warfare tactics, and build order optimization in order to counter. A "fair" fight.

The archer rush was so abusive because it allowed the human to flex its tactical superiority before the AI bonuses kicked in...an unfair fight.

Likewise, the AI getting bonuses on Turn 1 allows them to start a snowball effect before I have had a chance to utilize my optimizations. It gives them incredible advantages in forward settling, religion, and early wonder production...and that early in the game there isn't that much I can do to counter. Again, an "unfair fight".

Its similar to how I feel about the AI getting free promotions (generally fair, a compensation vs my superior warfare tactics) vs AI pathfinders getting promotions on turn 1 (unfair, ability to scout the map and take ruins before I could possibly counter).

I think this is an excellent illustration of the problem.


With regard to an earlier poster - I'd be more in favour of an AI bonus every 20 turns or so. It's the same for all AI's, zero variability.

 

[Stalker0]

So a quick datapoint after a few quick games. Previously on Immortal, Stonehenge/Pyramids were being completed in the 28-34 turn range (28 being the very fast like Washington style players). So in general I played to a Turn 28-30 build as a "reasonably solid opener".

The AI has been snagging both wonders now by Turn 22. Phew...I think these wonders just went from "a solid option" to "AI exclusive". Without a booster like Washington, or a production ruin, I'm not sure how to build the wonders that quick.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Time to get back to Emperor i guess.

Thanks for the heads up, I was probably going to go down a difficulty for this patch anyway lol.

Might want to drop down two levels...

Spoiler :

This is unexpected.

"Difficulty
AI gets their 'A/B/C' bonus starting at first city founding".

So getting a religion or an early wonder seems more difficult.

I'm eager to test this.

Thank, G !

I basically rushed Halicarnassus and still lost it with 2 turns to go around turn 50 (even with a marble/stone prod bonus...). Also, all 5 religions were founded by turn 100; I picked springtime for my silk and nearby citrus + citrus, and I actually had solid faith output once my plantations and herbalists were online, thinking I could realistically scoop the last religion, but I ended up still being 20 turns away from my prophet. Previously on emperor that would net me a religion.

 

[Gidoza]

So a quick datapoint after a few quick games. Previously on Immortal, Stonehenge/Pyramids were being completed in the 28-34 turn range (28 being the very fast like Washington style players). So in general I played to a Turn 28-30 build as a "reasonably solid opener".

The AI has been snagging both wonders now by Turn 22. Phew...I think these wonders just went from "a solid option" to "AI exclusive"

Ouch yeah that's no good. The early wonders should always be human-available. I'm a vote for no bonus to AI for first city for sure.

I'm still not a fan of the crappy wonder rewards for failing to complete and still am not convinced that much better ones are reasonable, but whatever.

 

[Recursive]

Variability is great for some things but is that what we want for the difficulty curve?

I'd argue there's value to it. It's meant to simulate a skilled human player's strategic optimizations, etc. so it makes sense that the more successful AIs would receive larger bonuses. And it ensures a challenge.

 

[DeAnno]

Going to start on Emperor instead of Deity, hearing the magnitude of this, and hoping not to get blown out even so.

With regards to international trade routes, maybe their vanilla (AI and human) completions need to be re-buffed, and probably with something other than tourism? If the AI is going to get massive bonuses for risking ITRs and completing them, feels thematic for the human to be able to try to do it too.

 

[Bromar1]

I'd argue there's value to it. It's meant to simulate a skilled human player's strategic optimizations, etc. so it makes sense that the more successful AIs would receive larger bonuses. And it ensures a challenge.

There's a difference between snowballing from overall good play and disproportionately favoring certain platstyles though.

I agree with Gidoza, why not just have the bonus apply every X turns? I would say around every 5 turns to make it more predictable

 

[Gidoza]

I'd argue there's value to it. It's meant to simulate a skilled human player's strategic optimizations, etc. so it makes sense that the more successful AIs would receive larger bonuses. And it ensures a challenge.

That doesn't make any sense. One of the main complaints I see on this forum is *about* snowballing and the impossibility of preventing it, and that includes human snowballing. We do not need more of this.

In that vein, I simply do not understand the reduction in science cost of Information-age techs in a recent patch, as space-faring was already occurring around turn 400, which is far too early. I'd rather see a price increase of 10% in all ages to slow things down just a little.

Returning to snowballing - part of the point t of higher tech costs and policy costs of having more cities is to curb snowballing. It also doesn't make any sense now to argue that "difficulty" ought to be related to the capability of an AI to snowball based on other variable factors, or why even have some of the most basic features in the game in place at all? This strikes me as silly.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

AI workers more bold in their desire to improve tiles in spooky places
AI worker logic vastly improved, sanitized, reprioritized
AI homeland patrol/escort code cleaned up, more effective at finding proper tiles to park on
Fixed pioneer cost bug

This optimization of workers was so necessary and I'm thankful that it's been addressed (along with Pioneer fix); as you already pointed out, this in itself should increase early game difficulty. Does this also apply to worker automation for humans as well?

 

[Gazebo]

This optimization of workers was so necessary and I'm thankful that it's been addressed (along with Pioneer fix); as you already pointed out, this in itself should increase early game difficulty. Does this also apply to worker automation for humans as well?

Yup. You can try it out and see. Things to watch out for: if the workers get caught in a 'replace improvement loop,' let me know. (i.e. farm->village->farm->village over and over on a tile).

G

 

[Recursive]

That doesn't make any sense. One of the main complaints I see on this forum is *about* snowballing and the impossibility of preventing it, and that includes human snowballing. We do not need more of this.

In that vein, I simply do not understand the reduction in science cost of Information-age techs in a recent patch, as space-faring was already occurring around turn 400, which is far too early. I'd rather see a price increase of 10% in all ages to slow things down just a little.

Returning to snowballing - part of the point t of higher tech costs and policy costs of having more cities is to curb snowballing. It also doesn't make any sense now to argue that "difficulty" ought to be related to the capability of an AI to snowball based on other variable factors, or why even have some of the most basic features in the game in place at all? This strikes me as silly.

Hmm, you have a point. It's just my opinion, anyway, don't take it as an Official Developer Statement. I only really focus on diplomacy

 

[Gazebo]

That doesn't make any sense. One of the main complaints I see on this forum is *about* snowballing and the impossibility of preventing it, and that includes human snowballing. We do not need more of this.

In that vein, I simply do not understand the reduction in science cost of Information-age techs in a recent patch, as space-faring was already occurring around turn 400, which is far too early. I'd rather see a price increase of 10% in all ages to slow things down just a little.

Returning to snowballing - part of the point t of higher tech costs and policy costs of having more cities is to curb snowballing. It also doesn't make any sense now to argue that "difficulty" ought to be related to the capability of an AI to snowball based on other variable factors, or why even have some of the most basic features in the game in place at all? This strikes me as silly.

I'm seeing the AI consistently hit SS parts around year 2010 now, which is more in-line with game pace than before.

G

 

[Moi Magnus]

For the record, the initial reason for the ABC bonuses (when founding cities & co) was that previous kind of bonuses fell apart in the late game, and was not able to catch back the human if it fell apart, making the end game particularly boring. Hence the need for a quadratic bonus, that gives a LOT to the AIs in late game, so that a "second/third place AI" behind the human gets a chance to overthrow the human leader if the human stop playing smartly.

While the early game effects of those founding/GP/etc bonuses is not to be neglected, their purpose is to be late game bonuses for all contenders to the victory
(Without having players complaining that the negligible civs come back from ashes for absolutely no reason other than obvious "cheating" because of difficulty bonuses. Difficulty bonuses are a rough subject because not everyone has the same notion of "fair" and "acceptable" bonuses for the AI.)