New Beta Version - January 14th (1-14)

[BiteInTheMark]

First, Prince AI has very few bonuses. If you’re getting stomped by them, drop difficulty further.

25% less production cost for prince in mid game isnt minor, for emperor, AI is only paying half the cost in midgame. This isnt a minor thing, if I didnt play on highest difficulty and AI can produce twice as many units as I can.
Are those numbers correct for deity? 21% production cost in last age? 5 times higher output? This really sounds wrong to me.
Infixio already have shown, AI is able to build everything, without playing the highest difficulty. I think, due to the last changes, the AI is now much better in city management and dont need such high advantages anymore.
Deity player, I want to ask you, is it possible to win deity difficulty without going warmonger? I dont expect a positive answer, too many people present their deity games and they are nearly only epic speed (which serves warmonger play).

If you really think there is no amount of units or unit production that can make war impossible, you're crazy. If we're agreed that there is some amount that makes war impossible, it should be a logical conclusion that there is a balanced middle ground where war is difficult, but possible.

Obviously there are other factors like free XP and bonus XP, as well as more general bonuses that can make AIs harder to deal with.

If the AI can have more units, they will produce more units and ignore more the infrastructure and growth of its cities. With higher supply cap, they also have to pay more maintanence, and in the last games, ive seen some empires struggling with their income (and their research).
In some cases, numbers dont help the AI that much, if you plan your cities. This isnt every time possible, but in my last game I killed 40 units with field guns, cause the passage to my city was only 2 tiles wide and they simply pushed in and get killed one by one.
A modifier to reduced damage taken or greater CS would fit it more.

 

[Gazebo]

25% less production cost for prince in mid game isnt minor, for emperor, AI is only paying half the cost in midgame. This isnt a minor thing, if I didnt play on highest difficulty and AI can produce twice as many units as I can.
Are those numbers correct for deity? 21% production cost in last age? 5 times higher output? This really sounds wrong to me.
Infixio already have shown, AI is able to build everything, without playing the highest difficulty. I think, due to the last changes, the AI is now much better in city management and dont need such high advantages anymore.
Deity player, I want to ask you, is it possible to win deity difficulty without going warmonger? I dont expect a positive answer, too many people present their deity games and they are nearly only epic speed (which serves warmonger play).


If the AI can have more units, they will produce more units and ignore more the infrastructure and growth of its cities. With higher supply cap, they also have to pay more maintanence, and in the last games, ive seen some empires struggling with their income (and their research).
In some cases, numbers dont help the AI that much, if you plan your cities. This isnt every time possible, but in my last game I killed 40 units with field guns, cause the passage to my city was only 2 tiles wide and they simply pushed in and get killed one by one.
A modifier to reduced damage taken or greater CS would fit it more.

Discussion was about first 100 turns - that's not mid-game, and Prince has a pretty minor set of bonuses in the first 100 turns.

If you don't like the handicaps of the AI...step down a difficulty. I'm not in the business of stroking egos by making it easier for players to beat the AI at their preferred handicap name.

G

 

[RoAdd]

Played a bit with the beta.... Some rather interesting things happend... Poland remaining in ancient era due to 100 negative gold... The hunts selected two ancient trees progress and authority. I like the change to bots to be more aggressive and keep ya on your toes. I was attacked by Attila 30 turns in right when i popped my second city, it was surrounded by 2 chariots and 2 brutes, I was pillaged with a scout by Spain, lost one insular city cause i didnt have a fleet and whenever i had a border unprotected with an AI, he didnt hesitate to attack. Not complaining just nice to see bots use windows of opportunity. Emperror dificulty if relevant.

 

[MorphBer]

Ok, ok. AI is playing better. Do we want the game to be harder? If not, then AI bonuses have to cool down a bit.

The question more likely is: Are deity players bored so they need further challenge? Because I'm still struggling with Emperor. Just when I thought I could move up...

I would say Emperor has gotten harder but that is only a feeling, since to many things have been changing and I only played one game with each patch and this patch I trie to go wide as early as possible which I find significantly harder than tall (peacefull or warmongering) early. It just seems impossible to keep up with infrastructe and units.

My guess is: Yields have been cut left and right in the last patches, I don't know if AI bonus were adjusted as welll but if not their relative bonus has increased combined with better resource management.

The increase in building purchase cost seems to make it harder for me to keep up. I can only buy 1-2 buildings in my cities now, which is so much less than the last 2 betas



I mean look at this Inca opponent, he has the same policy tree but allready 3 Policies while I have to wait 50+ Turns for my 3rd. Has 17 pop compared to my 10. ALos 4 Cities while all I did was focus on expansion, and has 5 Units compared to my lonley warrior. I don't think he outsmarted me this much in 77 turns.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Discussion was about first 100 turns - that's not mid-game, and Prince has a pretty minor set of bonuses in the first 100 turns.

If you don't like the handicaps of the AI...step down a difficulty. I'm not in the business of stroking egos by making it easier for players to beat the AI at their preferred handicap name.

G

Infixio was talking about AI was able to build everything in turn 150. Your talking about AI has only minor advantages in this stage, but AI is doing something, thats simply impossible for humans.
I dont want to step down, cause I like the diplomatic behavior of the AI. There is more DoW, more aggresivness, more push against cities, more competition.
The handicap yields forces players to step down, not cause they are playing worse than before, not cause the AI is making much better decisions.
In short, I would prefer playing against emperor diplomacy with prince/king handicap.

I would say Emperor has gotten harder but that is only a feeling, since to many things have been changing and I only played one game with each patch and this patch I trie to go wide as early as possible which I find significantly harder than tall (peacefull or warmongering) early. It just seems impossible to keep up with infrastructe and units.

It is now more difficult than before. The human was always better at playing tall than wide. But now its much harder to get food and growth to support the even weaker, more hungry specialists. The main source of power by tall play. The overall yields you earn gets nerfed. No bad thing, it slows down the lategame. But It looks like the handicap and the extra yields for events didnt get adjusted to it. (as you mentioned)

The increase in building purchase cost seems to make it harder for me to keep up. I can only buy 1-2 buildings in my cities now, which is so much less than the last 2 betas

The cost of units/buildings in the last patch seemed fine to me. In the lategame I was able to buy a lot, but this may be the case, cause I picked a grow heavy nation (india) which seem to be a bit overpowered, due to the cuts in food. I dunno why the costs have risen by 30% in this patch, maybe Gazebo made also the observation from Infixio, but in my opinion, he made the wrong conclusion. The costs are not too low, cause AI can build it all, the AI simply gets too much handicaps for this version, and is now able to build it all.

 

[Infixo]

I dont want to step down, cause I like the diplomatic behavior of the AI. There is more DoW, more aggresivness, more push against cities, more competition.
In short, I would prefer playing against emperor diplomacy with prince/king handicap.

Diplomacy behavior is affected by Difficulty??? Can you give an example?

 

[Gazebo]

Infixio was talking about AI was able to build everything in turn 150. Your talking about AI has only minor advantages in this stage, but AI is doing something, thats simply impossible for humans.
I dont want to step down, cause I like the diplomatic behavior of the AI. There is more DoW, more aggresivness, more push against cities, more competition.
The handicap yields forces players to step down, not cause they are playing worse than before, not cause the AI is making much better decisions.
In short, I would prefer playing against emperor diplomacy with prince/king handicap.


It is now more difficult than before. The human was always better at playing tall than wide. But now its much harder to get food and growth to support the even weaker, more hungry specialists. The main source of power by tall play. The overall yields you earn gets nerfed. No bad thing, it slows down the lategame. But It looks like the handicap and the extra yields for events didnt get adjusted to it. (as you mentioned)

None of those things (diplomacy, war, etc.) are affected by difficulty. AI is just as shrewd at all levels.

I don't intend on softening any of the handicaps. Pinning the AI's ability to do infrastructure well solely on handicaps is a weak assessment.

G

 

[BiteInTheMark]

None of those things (diplomacy, war, etc.) are affected by difficulty. AI is just as shrewd at all levels.

I don't intend on softening any of the handicaps. Pinning the AI's ability to do infrastructure well solely on handicaps is a weak assessment.

G

NoTechTradeModifier Willingness of the AI to trade technologies 50 40 30 20 15 10 5 1
AIDeclareWarProb Increase of desire to go at war against the Player 60 90 100 100 105 110 115 125

Copied from the Vox Populi Wiki, entry for difficulty.
I thought, if such things are given a value, other things are also dependend on difficulty too.

Doesnt the AI get handicap yields to compensate lost yields by bad decisions? Like getting yields for settling a city, cause a human settle on better spots and get more yields and such handicaps are for those circumstances to compensate the bad AI? Or need less production for units to compensate higher losses in war? Whats the surpose of the handicaps, if not by this reason?
In my opinion, thanks to your changes Gazebo, the AI now makes significantly better decisions in the development of their infrastructure, making it less necessary to compensate this.

PS: The handicap yields in former versions were adjusted to an AI, that was ignoring basic infrastructure like monuments. You changed such bad behavior.... only one example why the AI is doing now much better without more handicaps.

 

[Gazebo]

NoTechTradeModifier Willingness of the AI to trade technologies 50 40 30 20 15 10 5 1
AIDeclareWarProb Increase of desire to go at war against the Player 60 90 100 100 105 110 115 125

Copied from the Vox Populi Wiki, entry for difficulty.
I thought, if such things are given a value, other things are also dependend on difficulty too.

Doesnt the AI get handicap yields to compensate lost yields by bad decisions? Like getting yields for settling a city, cause a human settle on better spots and get more yields and such handicaps are for those circumstances to compensate the bad AI? Or need less production for units to compensate higher losses in war? Whats the surpose of the handicaps, if not by this reason?
In my opinion, thanks to your changes Gazebo, the AI now makes significantly better decisions in the development of their infrastructure, making it less necessary to compensate this.

PS: The handicap yields in former versions were adjusted to an AI, that was ignoring basic infrastructure like monuments. You changed such bad behavior.... only one example why the AI is doing now much better without more handicaps.

Neither of those things actually do anything.

Let's be clear - the point of the handicaps is to offset for the human factor. Reducing the existing handicaps so that players who played Deity/Emperor and are now falling behind defeats the purpose. @ElliotS and others who regularly play Deity are happy with that level - all the other levels scale down in a linear fashion from there. Just because the AI is doing better now doesn't mean I need to adjust handicap values - just step down a difficulty. Until Deity players tell me Deity is impossible I'm not touching any of the levels (as they are scaled off of Deity).

The AI's monument issue was literally for one patch, and it was fixed in less than 24h. I didn't 'rebalance the game' around fixing this bug. At all. Again, tons of misinformation is being spread/passed/thrown around. Continuing to spread it after I've said that it isn't true is not helpful.

G

 

[Ziad]

Actually scratch that not enough data just yet.

 

[Txurce]

Let's be clear - the point of the handicaps is to offset for the human factor. Reducing the existing handicaps so that players who played Deity/Emperor and are now falling behind defeats the purpose. @ElliotS and others who regularly play Deity are happy with that level - all the other levels scale down in a linear fashion from there. Just because the AI is doing better now doesn't mean I need to adjust handicap values - just step down a difficulty. Until Deity players tell me Deity is impossible I'm not touching any of the levels (as they are scaled off of Deity).

The logic here makes sense if Deity players (playing on standard) mostly play a balance of culture, diplomacy, science and domination games. But as I believe Stalker0 suggested, many players focus on domination, where unhappiness is ignored more than it can be when competing for other VCs. My sense is that most standard/Deity players focus on Domination. I wonder if a majority of them find the current game well-balanced when going for, say, Science victory.

In my games on Immortal, I'm competitive, but when I do fall behind, it's due to unhappiness that in turn seems to stem from falling behind the leader culturally, more than I had a few patches back.

 

[Gazebo]

The logic here makes sense if Deity players (playing on standard) mostly play a balance of culture, diplomacy, science and domination games. But as I believe Stalker0 suggested, many players focus on domination, where unhappiness is ignored more than it can be when competing for other VCs. My sense is that most standard/Deity players focus on Domination. I wonder if a majority of them find the current game well-balanced when going for, say, Science victory.

In my games on Immortal, I'm competitive, but when I do fall behind, it's due to unhappiness that in turn seems to stem from falling behind the leader culturally, more than I had a few patches back.

I'd need CrazyG, ElliotS et. al. to confirm the domination proclivity. My understanding is that they do not exclusively do that, but I'm happy to be corrected if so. In any case, as I noted, difficulties stem from Deity-down in terms of values, so changes need to come from the top.

G

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Neither of those things actually do anything.

Let's be clear - the point of the handicaps is to offset for the human factor. Reducing the existing handicaps so that players who played Deity/Emperor and are now falling behind defeats the purpose. @ElliotS and others who regularly play Deity are happy with that level - all the other levels scale down in a linear fashion from there. Just because the AI is doing better now doesn't mean I need to adjust handicap values - just step down a difficulty. Until Deity players tell me Deity is impossible I'm not touching any of the levels (as they are scaled off of Deity).

The AI's monument issue was literally for one patch, and it was fixed in less than 24h. I didn't 'rebalance the game' around fixing this bug. At all. Again, tons of misinformation is being spread/passed/thrown around. Continuing to spread it after I've said that it isn't true is not helpful.

G

First, Iam sry, I doesnt want to attack you or spread any misinformations. The monument was an example, how bad the AI was performing in making some decisions to improve their infrastructure (and I dont think, they ignored the monument only, creating some vacuum in their infrastructure).
If difficulty doesnt impact any diplomatic behavior, than my request is obsolete. So, the AI is simply more aggresiv cause shes simply stronger overall?

Do you target any difficulty, where any victory condition has the same chance to be successful? It seems high difficulty can only be won by early warmongering.

 

[ElliotS]

I'd need CrazyG, ElliotS et. al. to confirm the domination proclivity. My understanding is that they do not exclusively do that, but I'm happy to be corrected if so. In any case, as I noted, difficulties stem from Deity-down in terms of values, so changes need to come from the top.

G

I do about 90% domination. Tall feels pretty boring, and wide-peaceful is either impossible or turns into domination.

Mid-Late game when you can't build every building wide hits an iceburg of unhappiness in my experience, not to mention that the culture and science scalers make me feel like anything other than domination is best done tall. (Including Diplomacy now.)

The simple fact is that tall has enough production to get the city state alliances they need to win, and can get ideology/printing press faster and with much less risk.

At least that's how it was last time I played tall a patch or two ago. I'm not sure if recent nerfs to tall have changed things in these betas. (Been mostly focusing on my area of expertise and work.)

I'll also admit that I MAY have a blind-spot with peaceful wide. I forget who was posting their city-spamming progress strategies, but there are people better than me at peaceful wide. Maybe they can make it work on Deity, but I've had a lot of trouble with it.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Neither of those things actually do anything.
G

• AIDeclareWarProb - % extra desire to DOW humans

Cheers,
G

It is kind of difficult to know which bonus of the DifficultyMod.xml is used or not

 

[Gazebo]

It is kind of difficult to know which bonus of the DifficultyMod.xml is used or not

Blame Firaxis, not me. I think AIDeclareWarProb adds the slightest small % bonus to war approaches for the AI, but it's a drop in an ocean.

G

 

[Rekk]

OK, I found out why. It seems that you are not using Small UI Interface option. I've totally forgot that something like "not small UI" even exists, my bad. Anyway, here's the fix, until the next VP release. Put that file into ...\MODS\(6a) Community Balance Overhaul - Compatibility Files (EUI) or ...\MODS\(6c) 43 Civs CP\EUI.

How do you activate the Small UI Interface option?

 

[Infixo]

How do you activate the Small UI Interface option?

In MODS folder, there is UserSettings.ini.

 

[CrazyG]

In my games on Immortal, I'm competitive, but when I do fall behind, it's due to unhappiness that in turn seems to stem from falling behind the leader culturally, more than I had a few patches back.

I win using culture or diplomatic most often (playing on Deity). I usually get bored when going for science and just call it a win if its obvious. I don't win via domination, I often conquer at least one neighbor but stick to peace after that.

Usually if I lose, its usually because the diplomatic situation goes south and I have to fight too many wars. I don't get conquered, I just fall behind in city development and never catch up

 

[Txurce]

I win using culture or diplomatic most often (playing on Deity). I usually get bored when going for science and just call it a win if its obvious. I don't win via domination, I often conquer at least one neighbor but stick to peace after that.

Usually if I lose, its usually because the diplomatic situation goes south and I have to fight too many wars. I don't get conquered, I just fall behind in city development and never catch up

Falling behind because of too many wars (that I assume you would mostly have preferred to avoid) is an unpredictable, sometimes frustrating, but interesting part of the game. I don't know about late-game, but early on the AI will hate you if you conquer too many cities, let alone a capital. It doesn't matter who started the war. I'll still take a capital for the religion, but realize I am in for a lot of wars as a result. And I tend to lose almost every one of those games.