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

[Gazebo]

Shouldn't pioneers be more expensive than settlers, for the same reason? (Tech tree says 125-125-250p now)

Tech tree gives the 'base' value, not the actual value.

G

 

[Gazebo]

First game - 100% crash to desktop on pressing "next turn". I don`t know if it possible to understand what`s the problem from a save file, i`l add it just in case.

I just loaded your save and ran it, encountered no crash...

 

[JamesNinelives]

(*Admittedly, some of those hours are having Civ on while I cook or write rp on my other computer, but that's not the point.)

Many of my hours playing civ are me reloading starts to get the colours I like lol (distinct orange/green constract between grassland and plains).

I like the low-CS archers. Making them 1 range made them too useless so it's a good compromise. They are still pretty good units imo.

I like them too.

I'm intrigued by what they would be like if the CS and RCS were swapped tbh. I remember being one-hit by horses was an issue at one point. 5CS would make them tougher but with 4RCS they wouldn't hit as strong which makes sense for early-era units IMO.

 

[CrazyG]

Just want to say the new tribute system is a big improvement. I started next to two cultural CS and took authority. In the previous system tributing them would have given me like 400 culture by now (my total culture to date is around 800). Instead I got about 100, far more balanced.

You still get CS that go orange when they'll give up 0, sometimes -1 (I tried clicking and you don't actually lose gold). They should get a base reluctance of like 10%, and the empire proximity thing is probably unecessary.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Just a quick note on archers... they seem a bit lame at defending against early-game barbarians tbh XD. Like, I'm thinking I should have built a second warrior and saved myself some hammers. That's not to say they're not useful! Archers are nice with support. I'm sending my single warrior and one archer to whittle down a nearby barb camp.

I left my second archer to defend though, and I think in a 1-on-1 though, an archer would probably loose to a barbarian brute on flat terrain. I think I'm going to win by defending on rough terrain, but not by much. Whereas if I had a warrior at home defending he could tank against 2 barb brutes quite happily. Seems odd to me as I've always thought of archers as being more defensive given they are on the top half of the tech tree. I would be happy to see archers even go up to 5/5 myself for this reason. I might regret saying this, but the 1-range archer was actually better for my playstyle (I support 2-range archers though).

Spoiler Home Alone :

I'm playing the version of this beta where the AI gets no bonuses on founding their capital (on a lower difficulty) and it seems great so far. Gandhi actually took Earth Mother which I consider to be one of the stronger pantheons at the moment (and a solid choice for India). Will report back later.

Edit: oh, another note: I'm a little annoyed that my city just will not expand to that Amber luxury on it's own. It's only 2 tiles away but it prefers flat grassland to a luxury on a hill by a fair margin. I ended up purchasing it for 90 gold and honestly I wish I'd done it sooner.

Spoiler Not popular :

 

[CrazyG]

Edit: oh, another note: I'm a little annoyed that my city just will not expand to that Amber luxury on it's own. It's only 2 tiles away but it prefers flat grassland to a luxury on a hill by a fair margin.

It's because it's across a river.

 

[azum4roll]

Gandhi taking Earth Mother is weird. There could be no mining resources around him at all, so all he's guaranteed to get is the +1 per 3 .

 

[Balint2]

Gandhi taking Earth Mother is weird. There could be no mining resources around him at all, so all he's guaranteed to get is the +1 per 3 .

Gandhis UA is he founds a pantheon at turn 1, so when he has no vision around him.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Gandhi taking Earth Mother is weird. There could be no mining resources around him at all, so all he's guaranteed to get is the +1 per 3 .

You mean +1 per 2 ? It sounds good to me.

Edit: I just checked and he has a silk monopoly in mixed jungle/forest though lol. There is a gold lux sort of nearby I guess.

It's because it's across a river.

Hmm OK.

 

[CrazyG]

How does flanking work? I know its been changed a lot but I'm noticing something.

Songhai's UU gets +150% flanking bonus on the raider promotion.
Shock gets 5% flanking bonus as part of the promotion.

So either the Songhai one is crazy OP, or Shock's aspect is pretty irrelevant, right? Playing as Songhai, with 4 flanks I can deal 52 damage to a danish horseman, up from like 28 without flanking.

 

[azum4roll]

Wording issue. Raider gives +20% flanking bonus, can use enemy roads and 50% city plunder.

 

[Maxxim69]

<removed>

I hope you're just being facetious. Let's not get all lawyerly because of one immature individual with major entitlement issues.

I've been following the discussion on this mod since day one (and Civfanatics in general since Civ III, which neither my registration date nor my post count can tell ) and this is one of the most mature and intelligent gaming communities I've witnessed. Let's not lower that bar.

 

[Gidoza]

Immortal AI absolutely wrecked me. Medieval weapons when I had only 11 techs. Even if I didn't lose that war I don't think I had a chance though, I just can't catch up in anything really. Authority seems like the only option to me. Maybe India with some stupid pantheon can snowball?

Stalker did a good job explaining, I'll just add that one of the appeals of VP is the constant difficulty curve, not just overcoming the initial hurdles. These patches have big initial hurdles.

To be honest I don't think the instant yields on settle would be that bad if you removed culture from it. It is what really snowballs. I really don't being a tech behind, and I'm always going to have a smaller population. It also seems like tradition is more OP than the others when you get it on turn 1.

I think overall that everyone wants a challenge when playing a game and that it's not so much fun to just crush everything effortlessly. That's what ants on the front doorstep are for.

Challenge against a human are straight-forward because both are using the same rules, but humans are actually devious, and there can be a skill variance as well.

So when it comes to an AI - I believe we are all aware of the skill variance in favour of the human player. However, bending the rules to favour the AI makes the game unfun because we are easily aware that were not playing the same game by the same rules.

The way to set up the AI bonuses to maintain challenge without creating irritation is to make the human player *feel* as though the rules are fair on both sides, even though they aren't. I'd rank the previous version much better at this, but we can point out some clear elements.

1. Early Wonders should be fully accessible to humans.
2. Founding shouldn't be a stretch.
3. We should not be seeing the AI with a Settler when I barely have my first tech finished.
4. AI city populations should be about the same as a human city population throughout the game. If an AI secondary city has 12 pop to my Capital's 8 when I have the Hanging Gardens,.I know something's up.

These, and others - but the point is that this is like reduced production for military units are a more "hidden" item that doesn't put the AI's bonus right in your face. I'm also inclined not to give the AI free promotions, but rather to drop their XP required by like 40%. Tinkering will take some time, but making the AI look like it has no bonuses while *absolutely* having some is certainly something that is possible.

 

[Gidoza]

Just want to say the new tribute system is a big improvement. I started next to two cultural CS and took authority. In the previous system tributing them would have given me like 400 culture by now (my total culture to date is around 800). Instead I got about 100, far more balanced.

You still get CS that go orange when they'll give up 0, sometimes -1 (I tried clicking and you don't actually lose gold). They should get a base reluctance of like 10%, and the empire proximity thing is probably unecessary.

I'm hoping you can elaborate on your comment. My impression was that the tribute system was changed because it was too hard to tribute anything - I'd often be playing Authority with a huge army early game and couldn't do Heavy Tribute for one reason or another, which was irritating. But when I succeeded, I can't say that I ever found it overpowered.

 

[andersw]

I'm hoping you can elaborate on your comment. My impression was that the tribute system was changed because it was too hard to tribute anything - I'd often be playing Authority with a huge army early game and couldn't do Heavy Tribute for one reason or another, which was irritating. But when I succeeded, I can't say that I ever found it overpowered.

The 3-5 spearmen rush for tribute was extremely profitable.
Current system mostly seem ok, there is a cs quest to bully another cs which now is maybe a bit too easy, but otoh, sending a caravan isnt the hardest quest either.

 

[Zuizgond]

<snip>

G also gets a dollar every time someone creates a bug report on GitHub. That's why he leaves bugs everywhere on purpose.

 

[H0dgvikin]

I hope you're just being facetious. Let's not get all lawyerly because of one immature individual with major entitlement issues.

I've been following the discussion on this mod since day one (and Civfanatics in general since Civ III, which neither my registration date nor my post count can tell ) and this is one of the most mature and intelligent gaming communities I've witnessed. Let's not lower that bar.

Long-term lurker here. Just want to chime in that I really appreciate the great effort of this community in experimenting and refining the mod. It has single-handedly extended the playtime of the game for years (no, not actual years with 8760 hours each). Things go wonky sometimes but it's a learning process for us all.

G also gets a dollar every time someone creates a bug report on GitHub. That's why he leaves bugs everywhere on purpose.

If G gets a dollar from every bug report and download then who pays the dollar? Firaxis? Peasants? The spies of G lodged within the capitals of all bug-reporters?

 

[Gidoza]

The 3-5 spearmen rush for tribute was extremely profitable.
Current system mostly seem ok, there is a cs quest to bully another cs which now is maybe a bit too easy, but otoh, sending a caravan isnt the hardest quest either.

I suppose I wasn't doing Spearmen rush that often because I was using Horses (but you'd think that would make it easier, not harder). But anyways - a minimum value of 40% for tributing would be nice, as 1% seems a little low...

 

[JamesNinelives]

Poland, no. Poland please. Why Poland, why?!

Spoiler Westward Ho :

 

[andersw]

I suppose I wasn't doing Spearmen rush that often because I was using Horses (but you'd think that would make it easier, not harder). But anyways - a minimum value of 40% for tributing would be nice, as 1% seems a little low...

Thing is if you go for a few early spearmen, the amount of prod/faith etc you could tribute compared to your empire yields (with authority) was very high.
As soon as your capital grows a bit and you expand it was a bit less insane.