New Beta Version - February 22nd (2/22)

[Enrico Swagolo]

That's a pretty massive nerf to Arabia, even with the buffed science.

No, this is a big buff (for science). Instead of depending on randomness Arabia now gets even more reward from historic events (which it can spawn dozens of with Tradition into Aesthetics - regardless of whether or not a CS asks for a thing you may or may not be able to provide)

It gets 50% more science and only one, minor source that procced it is gone. A very unneeded yield increase IMHO, +3 science +1 culture for every GP spawn, every wonder, next era is even more broken than before. Considering Arabia gets far more GP than everyone else in the game the science is going to be nuts now. Yes, they'll get slightly less tourism, slightly less GP's (does it matter when they get this many though), slightly less culture but they'll get way more science.

Besides the very weird buff to Arabia I like the changes, it will definitely make playing around with CS's more interesting. Hanging Gardens buff is fine but isn't the wonder now a bit too good compared to other Ancient-unlocked policy ones?

I also agree with Tomice about buffing Coastal cities, especially since early game your coastal resource yields may be gone because a barbarian galley sits outside of your range but just right so it disables everything your city works on - and you can't do anything about it until Classical era unlocks your first navy.

 

[Finarvi]

I fear it can be exploited by players (making some worker walls).
It cripple the mobility of war units.
A solution may be to add the "liberation" menu for all civilian capture (ie, destroy/steal or "liberate"). With this, we can move armies in tile occupied by civilians without suffering the penalty, the ai keeping his unit.

Yeah, that would be great! More realistic and human-friendly.
Another option to handle that is to make this diplo penalty aply few turns after capturing so you have time to give civilians back (although I'm not sure if that's possible at war and if it won't just make civilians run around and disturb).

 

[Funak]

No, this is a big buff (for science). Instead of depending on randomness Arabia now gets even more reward from historic events (which it can spawn dozens of with Tradition into Aesthetics - regardless of whether or not a CS asks for a thing you may or may not be able to provide)

It gets 50% more science and only one, minor source that procced it is gone. A very unneeded yield increase IMHO, +3 science +1 culture for every GP spawn, every wonder, next era is even more broken than before. Considering Arabia gets far more GP than everyone else in the game the science is going to be nuts now. Yes, they'll get slightly less tourism, slightly less GP's (does it matter when they get this many though), slightly less culture but they'll get way more science.

I'm not going to try and convince you that CS quests stood for a majority of the historic events you got as Arabia, but for the first third of the game where that 2 science 1 culture would actually matter, CS quests were by far my biggest source of historic events.
By the time you get your guilds up and start generating historic events from great people, that 1 extra science is negligible. In fact fast forward one more era and all the yields granted by the UA are completely negligible.
In the renaissance era it takes 300 turns for the +1 culture granted by the spawning of a great person to generate the same amount of culture as the Aesthetics opener. The only way to make any real use out of those yields is by purposely not expanding, to keep your tech-costs as low as possible, a strategy that by itself is completely self-destructive.

 

[Tomice]

Maybe just increase the number of fish in the map generator?

Actually, that's what I did for my games

It has some side effects, though. The function in the Communitas script seems to add fish where overall food potential is low, unnaturally boosting small islands (because continental shores have food potential from other sources, preventing the script from adding fish there - as far as I understand).

Every island tile seems to be a ressource tile anyway (mostly coal or uranium), so I don't want to add stuff that makes this aspect even more unimmersive. Not that I'm against buffing small islands, quite the contrary, they where way too bad in vanilla. it's just that we have to be careful about immersion when doing so.

Adding more islands (atolls) has similar problems - increasing the value more or less makes every single tile island a good city spot (because they can then usually work 2-4 atolls, 1-2 fish and easily feed engineers) while it makes little difference for continental coastal cities (which will still have barely enough access to sea ressources to justify a lighthouse, let alone a seaport).

So overall, more sea ressources is not the same as better yields for normal coast tiles. Sea ressources are among the strongest tiles available, while normal coast is worse than normal land and barely better than desert/tundra. You will basically never have a citizen on those tiles if you play competitively.




One (rather bold) suggestion:
What if we give coast and ocean tile the same functionality as villages/towns - so they get extra gold for every cargo ship route that passes over them?
I guess it would be a simple copy-paste job for our code experts?
We could also borrow the code that lets land trade routes preferably run over roads and use it so naval trade routes prefer coast over ocean. If this adds too much gold, we could remove the 20% bonus from naval trade routes.

One effect of this change: it would make cities along popular shipping routes very valuable, encouraging a natural settling pattern.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I'm not going to try and convince you that CS quests stood for a majority of the historic events you got as Arabia, but for the first third of the game where that 2 science 1 culture would actually matter, CS quests were by far my biggest source of historic events.
By the time you get your guilds up and start generating historic events from great people, that 1 extra science is negligible. In fact fast forward one more era and all the yields granted by the UA are completely negligible.
In the renaissance era it takes 300 turns for the +1 culture granted by the spawning of a great person to generate the same amount of culture as the Aesthetics opener. The only way to make any real use out of those yields is by purposely not expanding, to keep your tech-costs as low as possible, a strategy that by itself is completely self-destructive.

Can't agree, the yields from this UA are never negligible. It can easily give you 100 science per turn (and should by renaissance), how is that ever negligible? That's more than the vast majority of your cities will provide. This UA can easily proc more than 100 times in a game, so is 100 science per turn negligible? I highly doubt that.

Also GPs are also generated before that too, esp with Tradition (which you should take every time as Arabia because that's the smart thing to do). A wonder may be snatched too, doubly so if you've got a GE which guarantees it.

What does +1culture have to do with tech costs?

Gonna try Arabia again but then I highly doubt you are a very reliable source when it comes to them, after all I remember well you defended them even when they literally got a Great Person every HE (100 points per HE) and when they got the slightly nerfed +3+3 25% GP per spawn you were also in their defence.

Edit - checked it, you actually said the free GP per HE wasn't working so I suppose the first part of my doubt is wrong

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

One (rather bold) suggestion:
What if we give coast and ocean tile the same functionality as villages/towns - so they get extra gold for every cargo ship route that passes over them?
I guess it would be a simple copy-paste job for our code experts?
We could also borrow the code that lets land trade routes preferably run over roads and use it so naval trade routes prefer coast over ocean.

I love that bold suggestion, I support it (unless it requires some sort of new code, then I suppose another solution should be invented).

Fishing boats should also get an additional bonus like towns/villages do if they're on trade route and road, like +1Production or something but then considering you can't control how the trade route goes on the ocean it could make it a tad too random

 

[Tomice]

One more (technical) thing: If the preference of land trade routes for roads is tied to the movement bonus they provide, maybe coasts could have a negligible movement bonus (1% or so, something that might not even be visible for the human due to rounding) just to direct trade routes.

 

[Mitch.sp]

One more (technical) thing: If the preference of land trade routes for roads is tied to the movement bonus they provide, maybe coasts could have a negligible movement bonus (1% or so, something that might not even be visible for the human due to rounding) just to direct trade routes.

As another player that would like more relevance for sea and coastal cities also find interesting your proposal to give sea routes the needed (and actually not present) relevance, because as already stated by Enrico Swagolo and you in this and others threads (and I totally agree) coastal cities are usually in a worst shape that interior ones, something really odd.

 

[Funak]

Can't agree, the yields from this UA are never negligible. It can easily give you 100 science per turn (and should by renaissance), how is that ever negligible? That's more than the vast majority of your cities will provide. This UA can easily proc more than 100 times in a game, so is 100 science per turn negligible? I highly doubt that.

100 science per turn when you're putting out 5k+ is really negligible.

Also GPs are also generated before that too, esp with Tradition (which you should take every time as Arabia because that's the smart thing to do). A wonder may be snatched too, doubly so if you've got a GE which guarantees it.

You might push out an engineer or two, but the rest of the specialists are really not worth working that early on, too big of a loss in population.
With the old UA, you could go hunting for barbcamps, pick a strong faith pantheon, or save cheap techs to win a tech-race or something. If two of the historic events from those quests hit the same type of GP you could switch your engineers to that type and finish it off, getting another event. That is not possible anymore without a ton of luck.

What does +1culture have to do with tech costs?

It was just an example of how negligible the yields are later on. The techcosts scale with number of cities, the UA doesn't, meaning the more cities you acquire the worse the UA gets.

Gonna try Arabia again but then I highly doubt you are a very reliable source when it comes to them, after all I remember well you defended them even when they literally got a Great Person every HE (100 points per HE) and when they got the slightly nerfed +3+3 25% GP per spawn you were also in their defence.

I'm in defense of trying to have the civ interesting, I thought the static GPP were a better idea than the percentual one because there would be less issues with out of control scaling late-game. The UA giving you a percentage of the current cost is a recipe for out of control late-game scaling, as great people spawn faster and faster late game. From what I've heard on the balance-forum this is exactly what happens with the current system.
I was opposed to replacing the flat tourism with science because I find science to be an extremely boring yield, that drops off in value dramatically as the game goes on especially considering culture works around the same way. Tourism per turn was unique in the case that no other UA really interacted with it, and with the tourism rework, it was usually just a weird number at the top of your screen. It also had some synergy with the tourism city-state quests.
Just as expected, the change in yields led to the UA just feeling extremely stale, the yields you collect stop being useful around the medieval era.

The way the Arabian UA worked in the last version, was that you could do some quests, maybe grab an extra GP or two early on, after that you did absolutely nothing until the modern era, at which point your UA starts scaling out of control and you win the game. The new Arabian UA works in almost the exact same way, except with the early-game interaction removed. You still get to the modern era and you still autowin, the only difference is that you're having an even more dull time getting there.
I'm saying this right now, that you could remove the yields from the UA and still nothing would change, you would still get to modern era and you would still win.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

100 science per turn when you're putting out 5k+ is really negligible.

5k? You must mean around modern era then and yes at that point it is not very relevant, I agree.

You might push out an engineer or two, but the rest of the specialists are really not worth working that early on, too big of a loss in population.

Hm, mostly true (unless you also go Mastery that is - in which case 5science2culture by philosophy in capital is more than worth a citizen esp since by that time you may be finishing Tradition anyway, granting you +1 Food. Pretty much only Great Merchants are the ones I'm reluctant at working even with Mastery - just because their UI is the best doesn't mean wasting so much effort on getting it up is worth it in the capital).

That was for other civs but for Arabia though I think Specialists are way more worth working for - I mean you spawn one, you get permanent 2s1c (now 3s1c, even better). With Mastery I work as many as I can handle after working the best tiles available.

With the old UA, you could go hunting for barbcamps, pick a strong faith pantheon, or save cheap techs to win a tech-race or something. If two of the historic events from those quests hit the same type of GP you could switch your engineers to that type and finish it off, getting another event. That is not possible anymore without a ton of luck.

Good point, but now it's a trade off - that for more yield.

I'm in defense of trying to have the civ interesting, I thought the static GPP were a better idea than the percentual one because there would be less issues with out of control scaling late-game. The UA giving you a percentage of the current cost is a recipe for out of control late-game scaling, as great people spawn faster and faster late game. From what I've heard on the balance-forum this is exactly what happens with the current system.

Good point and I agree that like 20-25-30 GP points would be better than percentage as they'd scale worse but be better early, but tbh I don't think the current UA can be made as interesting as some others without major changes.

I mean no matter what yields you change it won't suddenly become an oasis of fun like Spain which may not be the strongest but is sure very interesting, fitting historically and just awesome.

I was opposed to replacing the flat tourism with science because I find science to be an extremely boring yield, that drops off in value dramatically as the game goes on especially considering culture works around the same way. Tourism per turn was unique in the case that no other UA really interacted with it, and with the tourism rework, it was usually just a weird number at the top of your screen. It also had some synergy with the tourism city-state quests.
Just as expected, the change in yields led to the UA just feeling extremely stale, the yields you collect stop being useful around the medieval era.

I agree about science being a mostly boring yield, but it helps and is very, very strong currently, if not too strong early on. I'd prefer the UA to give something like 2Faith1Culture1GoldenAgePoint per turn per Historic Event, that'd make it way more fun (I admittedly am biased as I just adore religion in civ 5 even regular, but in CBP my love is even fiercer - except for religion beliefs that are a bit more boring? I mean they're only stuff per pop or buildings, feels like there's little variety).

The way the Arabian UA worked in the last version, was that you could do some quests, maybe grab an extra GP or two early on, after that you did absolutely nothing until the modern era, at which point your UA starts scaling out of control and you win the game. The new Arabian UA works in almost the exact same way, except with the early-game interaction removed. You still get to the modern era and you still autowin, the only difference is that you're having an even more dull time getting there.
I'm saying this right now, that you could remove the yields from the UA and still nothing would change, you would still get to modern era and you would still win.

I actually agree, although let's be honest the UA spirals out of control at late renaissance, not modern era

 

[hokath]

I find myself avoiding coastal cities. Increasing the fish in the map generator seems like a poor solution since it surely requires manually editing all those scripts? Unless CBP's code has some way of affecting this. Working shipping routes with fishing boats is also counter intuitive. Nevertheless, Naval trade is not in a good place at the moment in my opinion.

On the Arabia stuff, I think it's fine to take away the City State quests since their playstyle is perhaps a little broad in terms of strength. Not sure if the extra science is needed, since I found them quite strong, but we'll see.

On this point:

The techcosts scale with number of cities, the UA doesn't, meaning the more cities you acquire the worse the UA gets.

Clearly this benefits tall play, which is great.

 

[Gokudo01]

The techcosts scale with number of cities, the UA doesn't, meaning the more cities you acquire the worse the UA gets.

Which is fine for a culture nation. It would have been an issue if it was a diplomatic civs ( guten tag germany )

 

[Funak]

On this point: Clearly this benefits tall play, which is great.

Which is fine for a culture nation. It would have been an issue if it was a diplomatic civs ( guten tag germany )

I'm under the impression that in civilization, a game about empire-building, you should never be encouraged to avoid expanding.

 

[Lynnes]

Wow, great update!
Do the changes listed under 'New Things' (naval vessels, broken promises, capturing civilians) and 'New CS quests' affect only the CBP, or the CP as well?

 

[Tomice]

I'm under the impression that in civilization, a game about empire-building, you should never be encouraged to avoid expanding.

+1!!!!
I'm not talking about the specific issue, but as a general principle.
Not profiting much from more than ~4 cities was the single biggest flaw of BNW

 

[BenchBreaker]

One (rather bold) suggestion:
What if we give coast and ocean tile the same functionality as villages/towns - so they get extra gold for every cargo ship route that passes over them?
I guess it would be a simple copy-paste job for our code experts?
We could also borrow the code that lets land trade routes preferably run over roads and use it so naval trade routes prefer coast over ocean. If this adds too much gold, we could remove the 20% bonus from naval trade routes.

One effect of this change: it would make cities along popular shipping routes very valuable, encouraging a natural settling pattern.

I like it a lot

 

[Gazebo]

Wow, great update!
Do the changes listed under 'New Things' (naval vessels, broken promises, capturing civilians) and 'New CS quests' affect only the CBP, or the CP as well?

Quests are CBP, rest is CP.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I'm under the impression that in civilization, a game about empire-building, you should never be encouraged to avoid expanding.

I absolutely agree and was always of such an opinion.

 

[shaglio]

I too would be in favor of (if possible):

A) Increasing Fish Resources in map scripts (just Fish, not Sea Luxuries)
B) Having Cargo Ship range increased along coast (ala the Ironclad)

I would also support such changes being in the CP as well as the CBP

Now, for things actually pertaining to this Beta, G's response to Lynnes' question implies that the "Naval unit firing from City/Fort" restriction also applies to the CP. Did I read that correctly?

 

[Lynnes]

Hm, I'm in two minds about the diplo hit for capturing civilian units.
In theory it sounds like a nice feature, but sometimes you just cannot avoid it, e.g. when they are hiding in cities you conquer or blocking your way. So you would get an extra penality for something you can't get around.