New Beta Version - June 14th (6/14)

[tu_79]

My conclusion after playing a bit more is that Archer line isn't as bad as I thought. They need tuning down, perhaps, but not to a huge degree.

However the more I play Aztecs even after this buff, the more I'm underwhelmed and thinking "I'd be better off with Denmark, Greece, Japan, Rome, China, France, and pretty much everyone else". Jaguars are only good before Archers or Spears come to play and after that you're way better off just making archers of your own, the UB requires certain terrain types to be really good, the UA yields are okay early but fall off even despite the buff. Golden Age doesn't compare to what others will get because Golden Ages aren't as good as they were in vanilla. If you'd play Napoleon, that city you need to take to get a favourable win treaty as the Aztecs not only would fall easier, you'd also get 1/2 GWAM, +Culture/Production in cities which might be longer or shorter depending on populace than Aztec GA but always has better +yield percentages than a Golden Age, but not providing the Gold. The same applies to many other civs, Aztecs just look poor in comparison. Or so they feel, at least.

+easy tributes early on
-spear UU civs have it even easier
+easier religion, early gold
-other civs have better help with that
+in forests UU's got moves like jaguar
-UU falls off a cliff into the abyss almost instantly if AI takes the right techs
+free Golden Ages
-not as good as they used to be, you better get Mosques + Inspiration if you want it to be a real deal
+UB isn't Coffee House
-it also isn't Jelling Stones/Acropolis/Colloseum/Dojo/Hanse/Kasbah/Chateau/etc`

What matters is not only how they look, but how they do perform.

They are a weird mixture of Celts, Persia and Shoshone, I suppose this is why I never feel too inclined to play with them. It doesn't feel unique.

 

[Stalker0]

My conclusion after playing a bit more is that Archer line isn't as bad as I thought. They need tuning down, perhaps, but not to a huge degree.

I've played 3 early war games to try out the same, and this is my conclusion so far. Archer and CBowmen damage feels solid but not overpowering. The biggest thing I've noticed is the key durability difference between archers and catapults now. Archers can generally take 1 hit from a horsemen (unless with good flanking or high promotions), whereas catapults generally get crushed with one hit.

On CBowmen, right now I'm thinking just drop their CS by 1. They do feel a little bit too durable, I've started to feel comfortable lining them up on the front even against horse and swords. They can't hold up if a person goes heavy on horses or swords, but if the front line is light on the other side they can just line up and crush the opponent.

 

[grmagne]

I'm pretty sure I've encountered one bug, possibly two. I just wanted to confirm if anyone else is seeing this before posting to GitHub.

1. Twice I'm nearly 100% sure that I got a CS alliance for no reason whatsoever. They're just suddenly my ally with ~150 influence and I looked through the logs and I didn't complete any quests for them. I'd never encountered anything like this prior to version 6-14.

2. Ethiopia denounced me for defeating their World Congress proposal and yet I was the *only* civ to vote in favour of it. I've reviewed the logs and I'm quite confident there's a bug there.

EDIT: Update on item #2. After a closer look, I thought I accepted a bribe to vote "Yes" and then voted "Yes" again at the congress with my 2nd vote. However, the log actually shows me voting both "Yes" and "No". So I must have made a stupid mistake. And I can't "prove" there's a bug for #1 so no GitHub for me

 

[tu_79]

I'm pretty sure I've encountered one bug, possibly two. I just wanted to confirm if anyone else is seeing this before posting to GitHub.

1. Twice I'm nearly 100% sure that I got a CS alliance for no reason whatsoever. They're just suddenly my ally with ~150 influence and I looked through the logs and I didn't complete any quests for them. I'd never encountered anything like this prior to version 6-14.

2. Ethiopia denounced me for defeating their World Congress proposal and yet I was the *only* civ to vote in favour of it. I've reviewed the logs and I'm quite confident there's a bug there.

EDIT: Update on item #2. After a closer look, I thought I accepted a bribe to vote "Yes" and then voted "Yes" again at the congress with my 2nd vote. However, the log actually shows me voting both "Yes" and "No". So I must have made a stupid mistake. And I can't "prove" there's a bug for #1 so no GitHub for me

I know that getting 'evidences' is hard. You have to set auto-saves every 3 or 5 turns at most so you have always a recent savegame to look at. You have to enable AI logs too.

 

[ryanmusante]

Anyways, there’s a bug, mea culpa. In the CityHappiness.sql file the tech modifier should be 0.1 not 1.0. My debugging versions were at a .125 and It was a bit more than I wanted,

Is .125 or .115 still a consideration or is .1 probably going to be the standard for now? Is .1 too low?

 

[wistak]

We have some weird desyncs
Because they Bagan about 70 turn on standard speed
But we have one player new so maybe it's that

But it's really weird that they began about 70 and are VERY intense all time later
Before that nothing

When they happen often some ai units killed by not host are revived

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

Is the download link Gazebo posted at the beginning of the thread updated with the correct happiness tweak? I didn't see any edits on his post.

 

[wistak]

don't think so

 

[Gazebo]

Is the download link Gazebo posted at the beginning of the thread updated with the correct happiness tweak? I didn't see any edits on his post.

No, and I haven't had time to make any updates. I will, though, eventually.

G

 

[SIEG3]

Is there a way to finagle the bug that makes it impossible to make peace with another civ? I'm deep into a good game.

 

[Txurce]

Is there a way to finagle the bug that makes it impossible to make peace with another civ? I'm deep into a good game.

I haven't heard this bug mentioned elsewhere. I might have mised it, but you alternately, you may be unnaware of a rule that prevents you from making peace.

 

[SIEG3]

I haven't heard this bug mentioned elsewhere. I might have mised it, but you alternately, you may be unnaware of a rule that prevents you from making peace.

I saw it mentioned once, but I can't find the exact thread. It seems to be a bug that triggers any time the enemy offers you a city as part of the peace agreement, marking the trade as "Impossible!" even if you decline and try to make peace again later, and even without a city involved in the deal.

 

[Grabbl]

If nothing else helps, you should be able to impose peace by the Ingame Editor mod, if I recall right, it can edit relations between civs.

The other way out: You can't be at war with a civ that doesn't exist anymore

 

[Txurce]

I saw it mentioned once, but I can't find the exact thread. It seems to be a bug that triggers any time the enemy offers you a city as part of the peace agreement, marking the trade as "Impossible!" even if you decline and try to make peace again later, and even without a city involved in the deal.

That was me reporting it! I didn't understand what you meant. I reported it on GitHub, so it should be fixed next patch. I quit my game, but Grabbl has a good suggestion.

 

[scrunchy]

I've been meaning to ask... when did the ranged units range get changed? A lot of the changes don't make any sense - for example, why does a musketman have a fire range of 2 but a frigate is range 1? Is this because no way to balance them properly if they have a range 1?

 

[Txurce]

I've been meaning to ask... when did the ranged units range get changed? A lot of the changes don't make any sense - for example, why does a musketman have a fire range of 2 but a frigate is range 1? Is this because no way to balance them properly if they have a range 1?

Frigates were reduced to "1" range a long time ago, after a lot of debate.

 

[scrunchy]

Ok, but why does a musketman range is 2 for example, just like a cruiser or cannon?

I was just stating the Frigate as an example... want to know really why some ranged units fire 2 spots away... even original game made no sense that Archers shot 2 squares away just like a Battleship! Is this one of those 'forget realism because it can't be balanced properly if not done this way' type of things?

 

[Grabbl]

The range of the ranged ships was reduced because it was too strong together with the many movement points (compared to land units) those units have, especially as you could acquire the range promotion on top of that (both is resolved now - Cruisers+ get Range for free, so you can't increase the range further than that).

And that's the core problem of battlefield balance: The "battle" map is the same as the "strategic" map of building cities and your empire. That introduces the weird length stretching and has the effect that you can't really assign a real-world length to the diameter of a tile. So, in this sense, forget realism, yes.

 

[Gazebo]

Ok, but why does a musketman range is 2 for example, just like a cruiser or cannon?

I was just stating the Frigate as an example... want to know really why some ranged units fire 2 spots away... even original game made no sense that Archers shot 2 squares away just like a Battleship! Is this one of those 'forget realism because it can't be balanced properly if not done this way' type of things?

You're 6 years late on this point. I fondly recall the rage expressed by many when the first few beta screenshots of vanilla Civ 5 showed longbowmen firing across the English Channel on a real earth map.

G

 

[ElliotS]

Ok, but why does a musketman range is 2 for example, just like a cruiser or cannon?

I was just stating the Frigate as an example... want to know really why some ranged units fire 2 spots away... even original game made no sense that Archers shot 2 squares away just like a Battleship! Is this one of those 'forget realism because it can't be balanced properly if not done this way' type of things?

Yeah. There's a good design space for ranged units having 2 range, mounted ranged with 1 range and artillery eventually having 3 range. Land combat is nuanced and has lots of room for balance improvements.

Meanwhile naval combat has 2 unit lines for most of the game and very little terrain usage. We found that 1 range was much better than 2 for balance and went with it.

It doesn't make sense, but neither does archers being able to fire OVER a city. It's taller than forests they can't fire over. Not to mention that tiles are huge. Like 100km across huge. Archers aren't able to shoot 200km IRL IIRC.