New Beta Version - June 9th (6/9)

[theMisterRud]

I played 3-4 games and I can say, with my small sample size, that now it's way easier for a non-Authority civ to survive the start of the game with a war-mongering Authority neighbour (granted you endure being bullied or risking losing a city). The other thing is that I do agree with Enrico: a bump of the Monument culture would really help a non-culture luxury start, and it would render the choice between a Monument and a Shire more meaningful. As of the second version of the beta, a culture luxury start or a culture natural wonder really do give an edge over the alternative.

My 2 cents

 

[ElliotS]

Yeah I think monument should give 2 culture. Or at least try it.

 

[theMisterRud]

Throwing another idea out there: +1 for Monument after researching Animal Husbandry ? (if you are reclutant to give the +1 right away)

 

[LucidAPs]

Just some thoughts:

I think the monument is fine as is, you can get extra bonuses with pantheons and such.

Starting with a pathfinder is good idea for a lot of reasons that are mentioned here and i think it should happen.

Culture policy rate/speed is fine for me in most of the game, it seems more challenging and something i really need to think about now. The only problem i have is that in late game at industrial/modern era it feels like it takes forever to reach a new policy.

AI has very unstable GTP throughout my games, and i can easily put them at a negative GTP for many turns with just a trade deal.

I would like the option for Chill Barbarians to make them even "Chillier" because they are annoying as f***.

I think the samurai unit and dojo come really late in game.

 

[FoxOfWar]

I do like the idea of starting with Pathfinder, if it's feasible codewise. Mostly because it feels almost pointless to start creating a pathfinder on Marathon - all the ruins are gone by the time you create one because computers start with one.

Policy speed seems fine, mostly, although early game wonders might want a slight up on their policies required (as you were already doing, but anyway); feels sort of "wrong" to reach the tech for every wonder pre-Renaissance so that I am already over the policy requirement for it.

Sidenote not really a balance concern(bigger map size and all that) but just an observation: Sainthood is sort of stupid-good if map size/civ amount is over Standard with 8 civs. If I don't get it, someone else will and will get ten-fifteen techs and 3-4 policies ahead by them reaching Industrial. In my latest game, I spread my religion over my continent (4 civs out of 12), and I am currently getting just under third of my culture and science from just this one belief. Seen this a few times that a civ is ahead at least in decent part because of this one belief, and I'm not sure if I should just accept it or disable said belief for my own games when playing Large/Huge.

 

[ElliotS]

Sidenote not really a balance concern(bigger map size and all that) but just an observation: Sainthood is sort of stupid-good if map size/civ amount is over Standard with 8 civs. If I don't get it, someone else will and will get ten-fifteen techs and 3-4 policies ahead by them reaching Industrial. In my latest game, I spread my religion over my continent (4 civs out of 12), and I am currently getting just under third of my culture and science from just this one belief. Seen this a few times that a civ is ahead at least in decent part because of this one belief, and I'm not sure if I should just accept it or disable said belief for my own games when playing Large/Huge.

Are you playing on a really low difficulty? Huge maps allow 6 religions, so you spreading to 1 civ is average, 2 civs is great and 3 is excellent, so claiming that you're converting so many consistently means you're really out-performing the AIs in religion, which isn't my experience on Diety.

AS for the yields: I mean you'd need an insane 300 followers for just 30 science and culture. Are you telling me your mid-game science without religion isn't over 60 science or culture?

I personally think Sainthood and Tithe have been nerfed into the ground and simply don't pick them anymore, though my penchant for warmongering is certainly a part of that.

 

[tu_79]

Current question: What's the winrate between tall and wide in your testing?

I think the winrate needs to be higher for wide because of the ease of going tall. If you're equally likely towi n going tall vs going wide, then what's the point of all the hassle of war or expansion when you can get insane consistency in tall civs?

The difficulty of going tall should be making your cities efficient enough to overcome the advantage gained by wide players having many more cities, and leveraging the lead you get by not spending resources expanding to snowball ahead of the sprawling empires of your opponents.

My sample size is small and player-biased, so I'm wondering what your data says.

I disagree. Wide doesn't need to win more often. It does need to get their victories with fewer turns if well played.

Because tall is less work intensive, it feels right to have their victories at later turns (meaning they need to actively delay others).

So to say, a domination victory could happen any time between 1800 and 2000, but the science victory cannot happen before 1960. This only leads to wide winning more often if tall don't have the means to stop other victory conditions.

 

[vyyt]

Yeah I think monument should give 2 culture. Or at least try it.

How about giving a +1 culture to the city tile from the beginning? I find it kind of strange that the new cities do not expand their borders at all until you build a monument (or buy the tiles). This is what I have been doing for a while (I also added +1 GPT to the tile to prevent going into negative GPT too much in the early game) and it seems to be working fine - at least for my large/epic/emperor games - not much experience with any other settings. I also think that the 3rd-5th-ish policies took way too long to obtain before I made the change, but that may be limited only to my game settings.

 

[FoxOfWar]

Are you playing on a really low difficulty? Huge maps allow 6 religions, so you spreading to 1 civ is average, 2 civs is great and 3 is excellent, so claiming that you're converting so many consistently means you're really out-performing the AIs in religion, which isn't my experience on Diety.

AS for the yields: I mean you'd need an insane 300 followers for just 30 science and culture. Are you telling me your mid-game science without religion isn't over 60 science or culture?

I personally think Sainthood and Tithe have been nerfed into the ground and simply don't pick them anymore, though my penchant for warmongering is certainly a part of that.

Comparatively speaking, I suppose I am playing on low difficulty, only on King. Hence more 'observation' than an actual balance thing. Maybe it's just stuck to my mind the few times Sainthood took stupidly off(either by me or the AI) and ignored the times it didn't.

I probably wouldn't claim 'consistently', but certainly enough that I keep an eye on where said belief ends when playing a bigger map.

I grant on further look-around that I sort of ignored the fact that one of the civs I got to spread it to in my current game was very expansion-happy China (I totally forgot how their UA changed a while back, giving food), so that's a ton of yields(most of the world being in Renaissance, China has ~550 population total). But this game only got me to think about something that I have seen before: a very spread religion (often on another continent so I can't do a thing about it by the time I find out), having Sainthood and being an era ahead of everyone. It might be just something that sticks out when I try to figure out how exactly a civ gets so far ahead, and it's because of other things I am not seeing, but.... eh. Dunno, really.

Probably not anything worth changing VP about, I'm just pondering if anyone else has thoughts about this particular bit of faith.

 

[CrazyG]

Removing xp barb cap just on scout line is not posible?

Just scouts is a reasonable idea, it makes sense with infinite scouting experience. But was this a question for me? I'm not the guy to ask a coding possibility question

 

[Gazebo]

Just scouts is a reasonable idea, it makes sense with infinite scouting experience. But was this a question for me? I'm not the guy to ask a coding possibility question

It won't happen this version, but we'll see.

Anyways, update inbound. Some stuff from ilteroi, and more balance changes from me. The naval one is something I've been tinkering with a while now, and I'm finally ready to say that it is time.

• Fixed typos:
  • Tithes follower scaler now 8 (was 6)
  • Sainthood follower scaler now 10 (Was 6)
• New:

• • CS units can move through an ally's territory now
• Units
  • Ranged Naval units start at range 1. Range 2 begins with Cruisers.
  • Field Gun now range 2 (was Range 3)
  • Ironclad, Destroyer, and Missile Cruiser all require 1 coal (was formerly just ironclad).
  • Frigate and SotL no longer require Iron.

• 
  
  • Naval changes should make combat more melee and close-quarters oriented, playing to the AI's strength and minizing the absence of interesting terrain at sea.
  • Requirements for coal on all late-game melee ships also make it so that each unit type is prized for its role, not its resource use.
  • Frigate/SotL going Iron free means that all global navies have parity until the Industrial period. This is more historically interesting and gives civs that war in the mid-game a chance to find the iron they need to upgrade before the naval divergence of the industrial period.
• Adjusted policy costs again (first policy needs 50, scaling for rest a little less restrictive than first beta)
• Monuments are 2 culture (Was 1)

• Process:
  • Increased potency of Defense process, but decreased production conversion to 10% (so you should see the change more clearly, but it scales less steeply)

Link: https://mega.nz/#!eI0RUAzY!dAg1skulh0E0pXjN2S3y75A0Sj-tos5AdOsN_SmKUsw

G

 

[cammcken]

Wow that's a lot of changes to navy.

I agree the iron requirement was too restraining—on a island-heavy map, one had to choose between cannons or ranged ships, and both are important for keeping a well-prepared coastal defense / opportunity offense.

I wonder whether the coal requirements will make it harder to build docks/railroad stations/factories in all your cities. Wide civs may need to start deciding where they're worth building.

The range reduction will be...interesting. It will reduce the role of Classical navies; they will be used more as support for ground armies than an expeditionary force themselves. Which I feel is more historically accurate.

But anyway, this is now off-topic to the original thread.

 

[Moi Magnus]

It won't happen this version, but we'll see.

Anyways, update inbound. Some stuff from ilteroi, and more balance changes from me. The naval one is something I've been tinkering with a while now, and I'm finally ready to say that it is time.



Link: https://mega.nz/#!eI0RUAzY!dAg1skulh0E0pXjN2S3y75A0Sj-tos5AdOsN_SmKUsw

G

Is there any reason to the field gun nerf ?
I thought the goal of the field gun was to decompose the gap between canon and artillery (which was +1 range and Indirect fire) into "+1 range" and then "Indirect fire".
Field gun was possibly too strong, but now, the gap between field gun and artillery is possibly too big.

 

[bigcat88]

And what to do with navy now? Frigate only range 1(and u need so many shots to up frigate to range 2 now - it's almost impossible)? So every trebuchet and canon can defeat frigate? England and Venice are angry! Carthage and Netherlands are happy.

 

[obnosis]

I think ranged ships should now be able to move after firing, just like the skirmishers. they are pretty weak in melee range and they cannot hide behind melee ships anymore. so using them should not be almost suicidal.

 

[PapaRockett]

I think ranged ships should now be able to move after firing, just like the skirmishers. they are pretty weak in melee range and they cannot hide behind melee ships anymore. so using them should not be almost suicidal.

I guess they are now more suited to bombarding land units if adjacent to the coast, and then the cruisers are good for siege. I'm quite glad about these navy changes. In some of my past games I have absolutely dominated my neighbors in early game just from my navy alone. Spearmen can't do jack against dromons, and most civs don't have mathematics at that point.

 

[intelli]

Not really sure what the problem with ranged naval units was anyway, wasn't high on the list of demands was it?

 

[kawyua]

Wow, that's a lot of changes.

Production to defense was one that got scary later in the game - Like it is hell late game to deal with. When they can get >250 defense barely anything can touch them. I had to rely on carpets of tanks in order to take their city. Later, I had to be reliant on nukes because it is extremely time consuming to take cities with a normal siege.

And whoa, field gun nerf was kind of needed, but that really hurts any potential for sieging during that time. Understandably, It was an issue of player abuse as I haven't seen their combat ai use its extra range that effectively. Now I don't know how to deal with that void...

"CS units can move through an ally's territory now" Hell Yeah!

I think navy unit changes are awesome. I'm not quite sure what to do about it now.

Please don't forget about stele! With monuments being 2 culture, maybe up one for stele or something

 

[Gazebo]

Is there any reason to the field gun nerf ?
I thought the goal of the field gun was to decompose the gap between canon and artillery (which was +1 range and Indirect fire) into "+1 range" and then "Indirect fire".
Field gun was possibly too strong, but now, the gap between field gun and artillery is possibly too big.

That was the orginal goal of the unit, yes. That and to smooth the RCS transition. It didn't work quite as well and with recent changes to the fog of war the unit's penalty to vision is slight. Ultimately it has now just pushed the age of artillery cheese forward.

I'll consider naval move and shoot as a possibility if the units feel compromised. In a playtest of my own, and AI playtests, they weren't as squishy as you might think.

Re: Stele, it has faith and golden age stuff too. Ethiopia can manage the nerf.

G

 

[FoxOfWar]

That's very curious, as I was just thinking I wanted to play a naval-heavy game next. So "rolling a random civ and seeing how they do in tiny islands" is a go.