New Beta Version - July 16th (7/16)

[Gazebo]

One question with advanced actions: If you block an advanced action, does that just mean the spy will perform a different one, or that the spy will roll an advanced action and if it's one of the disallowed ones fail to do anything at all?

I've never really understood that and it greatly affects the value of blocking advanced actions.

There's an allocated pool of possibilities for spies every turn, and the pool is drawn from randomly. The pool fills up with x number of each advanced action type. If an action type is blocked, it isn't added to the pool. So the possibility of other actions increases by virtue of the pool's reduced variety. I've long intended to rework this so that the pool size remains the same but the action simply fails.

G

 

[ElliotS]

There's an allocated pool of possibilities for spies every turn, and the pool is drawn from randomly. The pool fills up with x number of each advanced action type. If an action type is blocked, it isn't added to the pool. So the possibility of other actions increases by virtue of the pool's reduced variety. I've long intended to rework this so that the pool size remains the same but the action simply fails.

G

So to be 100% clear blocking 1/2 the actions means that you'll still have about the same amount of advanced actions performed on you, but just not of the blocked variety?

 

[Gazebo]

So to be 100% clear blocking 1/2 the actions means that you'll still have about the same amount of advanced actions performed on you, but just not of the blocked variety?

Yes.

 

[ElliotS]

Yes.

Thanks. I agree that a rework is a good idea, because that doesn't seem very useful when you take the opportunity cost of most of these things into account. (Like Mandirs.)

 

[Owlbebach]

Yes.

Well, considering this, building new police stations is not that good cause your great people will be assasinated much more often. I'd prefer to loose 1000 gold arther than 500 Great Person points. Or did I misunderstand something?

 

[Txurce]

I'll be curious to see whether the airplane changes actually affect existing gameplay -- most importantly, whether usage increases.

My sense is that the spy changes could be even more impactful -- maybe even a game within a game, like the WC.

 

[Gazebo]

I'll be curious to see whether the airplane changes actually affect existing gameplay -- most importantly, whether usage increases.

My sense is that the spy changes could be even more impactful -- maybe even a game within a game, like the WC.

@8bitBob said it best - since there are units you can target that cannot effectively fight back, air units have an extended utility in-between healing phases.

G

 

[Txurce]

@8bitBob said it best - since there are units you can target that cannot effectively fight back, air units have an extended utility in-between healing phases.

G

That's not what I meant. Planes are infrequent in my games (sometimes 400 turns), and rarely use them myself. A change there is what I'm looking forward to. I can see why I might use them more now -- but will the AI?

 

[Enginseer]

That's not what I meant. Planes are infrequent in my games (sometimes 400 turns), and rarely use them myself. A change there is what I'm looking forward to. I can see why I might use them more now -- but will the AI?

Everything that Gazebo made is AI-friendly. The plane change was probably implemented to help the AI more than the human as they will now properly use the planes to wipe out tanks and important targets that can deflect the least amount of anti-aircraft damage.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Well, considering this, building new police stations is not that good cause your great people will be assasinated much more often. I'd prefer to loose 1000 gold arther than 500 Great Person points. Or did I misunderstand something?

Yeah I see the same problem - losing gold is irrelevant at this stage, but possibly having your entire GP progress wiped is huge no matter if you're wide or tall. You're losing thousands of yields like Science/Culture (GW/GS) and a few hundred Tourism with everyone which you'd get for the birth. Police Stations seem like they might hurt you more than they help you if that's the case.

 

[Gazebo]

Yeah I see the same problem - losing gold is irrelevant at this stage, but possibly having your entire GP progress wiped is huge no matter if you're wide or tall. You're losing thousands of yields like Science/Culture (GW/GS) and a few hundred Tourism with everyone which you'd get for the birth. Police Stations seem like they might hurt you more than they help you if that's the case.

My rewrite of the function will be in the next beta. Blocks will no longer remove from a pool, but will instead literally block an action from happening if it would have.

G

 

[Txurce]

Everything that Gazebo made is AI-friendly. The plane change was probably implemented to help the AI more than the human as they will now properly use the planes to wipe out tanks and important targets that can deflect the least amount of anti-aircraft damage.

Maybe I'm not being clear. I get that the changes encourage the use of air power. But the AI aren't reading this thread. So are they more likely to build planes than they have been? (Different from would they benefit more if they did.)

 

[ElliotS]

My rewrite of the function will be in the next beta. Blocks will no longer remove from a pool, but will instead literally block an action from happening if it would have.

G

You're a freaking god! Any idea when this will be, so I know when to make the next modpack?

 

[Gazebo]

You're a freaking god! Any idea when this will be, so I know when to make the next modpack?

Not sure. Probably a day or two depending on work and debug runs.

G

 

[Lissindiel]

My rewrite of the function will be in the next beta. Blocks will no longer remove from a pool, but will instead literally block an action from happening if it would have.

G

While you at it, could you also consider making advanced actions (both successful and failed) to reset advanced action timers of other spies located in same city? Last time, when I was first to hit Renaissance, my capital was constantly wrecked for the rest of the game, despite having lvl3 spy on defense.

 

[ElliotS]

While you at it, could you also consider making advanced actions (both successful and failed) to reset advanced action timers of other spies located in same city? Last time, when I was first to hit Renaissance, my capital was constantly wrecked for the rest of the game, despite having lvl3 spy on defense.

Or just make advanced actions less likely to succeed. It's like a 0-5% chance to kill they spy even with a level 3 defender. If they had a base 33% chance to fail and 33% chance for a failure to get the spy killed, it would be better imo.

 

[Lissindiel]

Or just make advanced actions less likely to succeed. It's like a 0-5% chance to kill they spy even with a level 3 defender. If they had a base 33% chance to fail and 33% chance for a failure to get the spy killed, it would be better imo.

When the city has ~10 spies in it, 33% fail chance doesn't matter. Some nerf to advanced actions success chance would be welcome, though.

 

[Txurce]

When the city has ~10 spies in it, 33% fail chance doesn't matter. Some nerf to advanced actions success chance would be welcome, though.

This is a good point, but isn't it reasonable that everyone's going to put a spy in the leader's capital? It's tough to balance the hit the leader's taking vs the gains someone trailing should get from a spy. Make them too weak and you'll just bag spying and put the agent in a CS instead. If I had to make a Solomonic choice, I'd go on the side of the money, not the side of the One.

 

[Gazebo]

While you at it, could you also consider making advanced actions (both successful and failed) to reset advanced action timers of other spies located in same city? Last time, when I was first to hit Renaissance, my capital was constantly wrecked for the rest of the game, despite having lvl3 spy on defense.

The data class doesn't share across empires for spies, so no. Besides, why should the actions of one empire affect the spies of another in such a way?

G

 

[ashendashin]

The data class doesn't share across empires for spies, so no. Besides, why should the actions of one empire affect the spies of another in such a way?

G

CSs have a cooldown for each coup, so a similar beefing up of security could be expected in the city which just got its biggest construction project bombed. Not like all the foreign spies in your capital held a convention and made plans on how to mess with this particular civ in consecutive order, right?

I don't have an opinion on this. Just throwing that out there. Balance wise I don't think this matters all that much.