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

[randomnub]

For experiment's sake I'm sharing a new DLL for this version with a 2/3 reduction of bonuses for capital founding, and a 1/2 reduction for all future city founding. I'll be interested to get Deity feedback on <100 turn behavior.

G

T100, Deity AI feels too weak.

Leading by a small margin despite a slow start (harassed by 4 nearby barbarian camps, had to build archers and got my first expansion down on t58), by now anyway my Babylon uniques are all in place and progress is starting to snowball. First to found on T91 (springtime, plus 2 faith from nearby Solomon's Mines on my first espo, and around T70 I finally completed a quest for Ife), Austria and Celts founded few turns after, therere're 2 free slots still. Hiawatha and Elisabeth are still in Ancient Era, Shaka just entered Classical: these are the three who picked Authority, 11-11-12 techs for them, against 17-17-17-16 of the other AIs (Maria Theresa, Boudicca and William went tradition, Ashurbanipal picked progress) and myself catching up at 17, will surpass them soon. No wars until couple turns ago when Ashurbanipal called me into a fight against the far away Zulus that I accepted, Authority civs are tributing CSs left and right but it's not enough to catch up with the pacifist guys.

I have 0 libraries and built a single Babylon Wall on t100, yet I'm second in science. Quite terrible culture as well (5 parfume tiles are all the culture I had so far, 0 cultural CS, Arenas are being built) but I'm sitting at 5 policies like other progress/tradition civs.

Maybe I'm biased because I have quite some room to expand and my only neighbour is England that's doing a very poor job, seriously 5 pop London? Other capitals are at 9-10, Babylon at 11. AIs expand at a decent pace but should be more aggressive and try rush some neighbours when picking that policy tree else tributes alone ain't cutting it, they're 6-7 techs and 1 policy behind by now, all those hammers into units feel wasted.

I'm also the only one with active CS alliances (3, and 2 friendship) only thanks to quests, even the tradition civs pissed the nearby CSs asking for some tribute in the ancient era and gave up on quests and early alliances, that's pretty bad for Austria expecially.

Spoiler :

 

[Stalker0]

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.

The only one I might disagree with here is number 4, at least by the midgame. Its similar to how an AI gets to have more promotions than me by default, I accept that because they use these things inefficiently that they need more of them. So I personally don't mind the pop bonuses as much. That said, I think it does create biases with certain policies/beliefs (ergo Love is a nice pantheon for AIs but not that great for most humans).

Ultimately if pop could be eliminated as a bonus I would be in favor, but its not a priority for me either.

 

[kenneth1221]

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.

I agree with most everything you're saying, but on the other hand, dealing with people with unrealistic project expectations and coming up with unique rebuttals must get old.
The arguments are somewhat amusing to read through after the fact, but towards the entitled, "you knew what you were getting into" is, in my opinion, a tad stronger than "please be nice to the developer who is doing this in their free time."
I would hope not to have a real disclaimer. But a joke disclaimer would be absolutely great. "We're not responsible for you deleting System 32 because you didn't like the mod, and we're especially not responsible for you getting angry at a video game."

The only one I might disagree with here is number 4, at least by the midgame. Its similar to how an AI gets to have more promotions than me by default, I accept that because they use these things inefficiently that they need more of them. So I personally don't mind the pop bonuses as much. That said, I think it does create biases with certain policies/beliefs (ergo Love is a nice pantheon for AIs but not that great for most humans).

Ultimately if pop could be eliminated as a bonus I would be in favor, but its not a priority for me either.

I'm inclined to favor pop parity partly because if AI have significantly more pop than human equivalents it may be a slight buff to war playstyles and conquering your pop from others, tempered of course by the pop loss on conquest.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Just encountered a CTD on turn 132. Seems to occur right at the start of my turn. Loaded a few turns earlier to try to identify the trigger, but no luck. I was playing the version with no bonus on capital founding.

Only mod I'm using that I can think would be relevant is the Community Events mod (I have had a CTD occur due to an event once but I was able to identify it as the cause in that case because new random seed caused reloading not to trigger the event, not so in this case). I was also able to load the save without any other mods and it still produced a CTD if that's relevant.

Spoiler Turn 132 :

From what I did play, balance seems good. Religious selection is notably more diverse. The warrior/archer synergy is particularly interesting at the moment. Sad to encounter a crash really, hasn't happened to me very often with VP. Have attached the autosave. Will try again!

 

[randomnub]

I replayed the same map with the 2-18b default dll and it's hilarious, turn 50 top AI has 5 policies, 13 techs, 28 pops in 4 cities and 2 wonders. Tradition. Bottom AI has 7 techs 3 policies, almost as bad as me, and went Authority.

Beside the yields imbalance that would require some tuning, I really dislike when all pantheons are taken by AI on turn 25, pyramids are built at T20 and so on... it just limits player options. We're basically back to the old deity free settler, given that they have enough starting population to start churn settlers out by turn 15-20. Less upfront cheats and a challenge that stays constant with time would be my choice.

 

[kenneth1221]

Only mod I'm using that I can think would be relevant is the Community Events mod (I have had a CTD occur due to an event once but I was able to identify it as the cause in that case because new random seed caused reloading not to trigger the event, not so in this case). I was also able to load the save without any other mods and it still produced a CTD if that's relevant.

I thought new random seed didn't do anything anymore? Surprised community events still has it.

I replayed the same map with the 2-18b default dll and it's hilarious, turn 50 top AI has 5 policies, 13 techs, 28 pops in 4 cities and 2 wonders. Tradition. Bottom AI has 7 techs 3 policies, almost as bad as me, and went Authority.

Beside the yields imbalance that would require some tuning, I really dislike when all pantheons are taken by AI on turn 25, pyramids are built at T20 and so on... it just limits player options. We're basically back to the old deity free settler, given that they have enough starting population to start churn settlers out by turn 15-20. Less upfront cheats and a challenge that stays constant with time would be my choice.

Missing a little context about your replay-- did you originally play with the dll that gives boost on settling capital or the one that didn't?
But I agree with your concerns about player choice.

 

[azum4roll]

Just encountered a CTD on turn 132. Seems to occur right at the start of my turn. Loaded a few turns earlier to try to identify the trigger, but no luck. I was playing the version with no bonus on capital founding.

Only mod I'm using that I can think would be relevant is the Community Events mod (I have had a CTD occur due to an event once but I was able to identify it as the cause in that case because new random seed caused reloading not to trigger the event, not so in this case). I was also able to load the save without any other mods and it still produced a CTD if that's relevant.

Spoiler Turn 132 :

View attachment 546663

From what I did play, balance seems good. Religious selection is notably more diverse. The warrior/archer synergy is particularly interesting at the moment. Sad to encounter a crash really, hasn't happened to me very often with VP. Have attached the autosave. Will try again!

What's with the horribly pixelated borders?

 

[Recursive]

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

All the other developers are in on it too! There's a secret cabal, and we meet weekly to discuss how to deliberately cause as many bug reports as possible! And we wear hooded cloaks, invent riddles and make vague, ominous statements like "the events have gone as calculated", just because.

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.

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?

Shhhh, don't give his spies more ideas for targets.

Glad you're enjoying the mod so much.

 

[Stalker0]

Just did a run with the experimental Dll. The Immortal AI is definitely softer overall. The biggest thing I noticed was I was able to build the GL by turn 97....that would never ever happen before the changes.

So I do think with these changes the AI is overall I bit softer than before any changes.

 

[Recursive]

Considering the AI were getting enough Culture for their first Social Policy on turn 1, I think a reduction in the bonus for settling the capital was called for.

 

[Gazebo]

Just did a run with the experimental Dll. The Immortal AI is definitely softer overall. The biggest thing I noticed was I was able to build the GL by turn 97....that would never ever happen before the changes.

So I do think with these changes the AI is overall I bit softer than before any changes.

Hm?

 

[Morh]

Hello,
nice to meet you all.
I've been a passive reader of this forum for a few years, as well as a player of this wonderful mod. It has been 2 or 3 years now, I think.
I have the same problem with this beta as 2 other people - somewhere between 40-60 after starting a new game it simply quits - no error message, nothing.
I happend in the past a few times with some versions, especially very late in the game or after several restarts, but that was really rare.
Now it is consistent. I've tried to install this version once more, and the result is the same. I haven't installed any new drivers etc. in the meantime, so I guess something must be wrong with this version...

 

[Padre19]

Experimental Dll it's ok for me.(king difficulty)
Hard but not impossible.
I didn't have any CTD.

 

[Stalker0]

Hm?

Comparing the Immortal AI of two versions ago and comparing it to the new patch with experimental AI....the AI currently feels weaker overall. That's my initial impression

 

[Cat-du-fromage]

seems like without bonuses AI can't face a human brain

Edit: most of the time AI perform well early but after the renaissance they became decadant et they fall behind harder and harder as the eras passe

 

[Gazebo]

Comparing the Immortal AI of two versions ago and comparing it to the new patch with experimental AI....the AI currently feels weaker overall. That's my initial impression

Hmm...that's not what I'm seeing in tests, but could be. Let's keep an eye on it. May need a middle ground between the two DLLs I've posted.

 

[Stalker0]

Hmm...that's not what I'm seeing in tests, but could be. Let's keep an eye on it. May need a middle ground between the two DLLs I've posted.

Also I haven't finished the mid game yet so the AI might catch up. But in general it feels softer in expansion, wonder production, and religion. ITs culture/science rates seem pretty good though so far.

 

[CrazyG]

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.

3 spearmen was enough to get it started. You got around 70 yields for heavy tribute, scaling slowly, plus another 25 culture once you get your second policy. If you start with a cultural CS in range, it's about 100 culture every 20 turns. The best one is actually military CS for the science. With enough of them you could reach medieval era by like turn 90.

 

[Stalker0]

Is the RCS difference I'm seeing because of tradition? Even if it is, that's a bit on the high side. 25% of 21 is 5.25, yet he is getting 7 extra RCS.

 

[randomnub]

Missing a little context about your replay-- did you originally play with the dll that gives boost on settling capital or the one that didn't?

I played with the easier (no boost on capital settling) dll first, and found it pretty easy at deity. I gave it some more tries up to turns 50-100 and can confirm my feelings. The one with capital settling bonus otoh is depressingly hard, I hope for some middle ground to be reached soon.