New Beta Version - March 14th (3-14)

[Gazebo]

Specialist Unhappiness: I'd like to debate it a bit.

Not the current amount of it per say. But historically the pendulum was swung back and forth on this topic. Sometimes specialists are heavily penalized with unhappiness, sometimes only a little.

Why are we penalizing them at all?


Fundamentally, Specialists are a choice between greater growth and other yields. Early game they far from automatic, but are something to be used and governed to balance more yields and GPs with a reasonably growing city. Late Game they are commonplace, but that's more of a factor of the infrastructure I've built up, and the growth I've done, to allow those specialists. And the IRL argument, specialists are very common in the modern era.

So why are we penalizing this playstyle with so much unhappiness? If specialists are too strong, we should look at their yield balance. And if they are not, why do we need to rope in happiness to yet another mechanic?

Tall. Tall would be too strong without said penalty.

G

 

[DeAnno]

On the other hand, tile pillaging seems to now have almost no impact on unhappiness. I set fire to literally every tile the Inca owned before I went in for the kill and they still weren't below 80% unhappiness, much less the threshold for a combat penalty. Is this because unhappiness caps at the city population and tile pillaging unhappiness is bounded by that cap?

I think maybe Pillaged tiles in specific should cause Empire Unhappiness. It seems fair that if a war enemy is going to lengths to pillage tiles it should have an effect on happiness, even on empires that ride their cities at the "happy cap" and don't suffer from Needs/Specialist unhappiness at all.

it would be nice to see whether a new citizen will bring about a new positive happiness, similar to how needs unhappiness is currently predicted.

I agree with this. Knowing what will happen with needs unhappiness is frequently less important than knowing what will happen with your happy cap, because if you're under the happy cap needs are largely irrelevant.

Going further on this, I think it might be a fun direction to try to make Golden Ages more based on happiness overflow and less based on instant yields. This creates a strong reward for managing needs and other sources of unhappiness when you're still below the happy cap, without taking the safety of the happy cap behavior away. My general thought would be to replace the CS GAP instant yields with other yields and also lower the GA bucket sizes even more, though I'm not sure how this would be squared with Great Artists fairly.

 

[Stalker0]

Tall. Tall would be too strong without said penalty.

G

Why...because Tall can work a lot of specialists? In the last several versions, I've worked plenty of specialists as Tall and didn't have happy problems...but never felt I was outperforming Wide civs.

 

[Gazebo]

Why...because Tall can work a lot of specialists? In the last several versions, I've worked plenty of specialists as Tall and didn't have happy problems...but never felt I was outperforming Wide civs.

It's a testing variable I saw issue with. Limited unhappiness from Specialists caused issues with Tall/Wide balance.

G

 

[JamesNinelives]

golden ages are now very rare unless you've got sources of or a small number of very efficient cities.

I should note that I got a golden age fairly early on simply from completing a city-state quest (reward was ~500 GAP). Not really a big deal, just wasn't sure if that was as intended.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Is it possible to not have the AI take control of disconnected players?

The pitboss option in game setup do that.
(Setup a normal multiplayer game, and then check the "pitboss" option)

 

[Gothic_Empire]

The pitboss option in game setup do that.
(Setup a normal multiplayer game, and then check the "pitboss" option)

It absolutely does not work in VP.

 

[Voker57]

It absolutely does not work in VP.

Works for me. Note that you need pitboss option in normal game, not start a 'pitboss' game.

 

[Txurce]

Specialist Unhappiness: I'd like to debate it a bit.

Not the current amount of it per say. But historically the pendulum was swung back and forth on this topic. Sometimes specialists are heavily penalized with unhappiness, sometimes only a little.

Why are we penalizing them at all?


Fundamentally, Specialists are a choice between greater growth and other yields. Early game they far from automatic, but are something to be used and governed to balance more yields and GPs with a reasonably growing city. Late Game they are commonplace, but that's more of a factor of the infrastructure I've built up, and the growth I've done, to allow those specialists. And the IRL argument, specialists are very common in the modern era.

So why are we penalizing this playstyle with so much unhappiness? If specialists are too strong, we should look at their yield balance. And if they are not, why do we need to rope in happiness to yet another mechanic?

I'm now in the Information era, with specialists in all cities (Guilds, RL's, most markets, some Banks). I try to balance local unhappiness by being balanced in my building, but don't really worry about it as long as global happiness is under control. This is how I always try to play, until spiraling late-game unhappiness stopped me. But even with 16 cities, I've yet to dip under 80% global unhappiness. It's one game, but I certainly don't feel penalized by specialist unhappiness (or any other, really). And I'm really enjoying it!

 

[Moi Magnus]

It absolutely does not work in VP.

It used to work in november for sure.

 

[Stalker0]

It's a testing variable I saw issue with. Limited unhappiness from Specialists caused issues with Tall/Wide balance.

G

That suggests that specialists May be too strong in general then imo.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

It used to work in november for sure.

I've hosted pit boss games and when someone drops, the AI takes control. This has been a problem for me for a little over a year and it doesn't matter whose modpack I use.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Note that you need pitboss option in normal game, not start a 'pitboss' game.

Oi. That I did not know.

 

[Txurce]

Just finished my first game with this patch. I had 19 cities, including two being razed and one puppet (a capital) picked up in my last war. I had a strong start as Carthage and was only challenged by the Inca, who were on the other continent. Global happiness was never an issue, which is what my inner judge would expect in a game where I'm doing well and building almost everything I need. The game was a pleasure throughut, with the Inca providing enough of a challenge that they were ahead by 2 techs very late in a game where I could have won a DV, but was playing for an SV.

Side note: I had been meaning to complain that the hammer cost of nuclear weapons is too high. And it might be. But...

I had a single A-bomb from the Manhattan Project. I dropped it on Cuzco, which was in a bay guarded by only one city, and took it with my dominating navy 5-6 turns later. That was the end of the Inca, and the effective end of the game.

EDIT:

Final global happiness:

Austria (restored, one city) 100%
Carthage 91%
France 79%
Songhai 76%
Inca 64%
Shoshone 63%
Spain 53%
Huns (—)

 

[Gazebo]

Just finished my first game with this patch. I had 19 cities, including two being razed and one puppet (a capital) picked up in my last war. I had a strong start as Carthage and was only challenged by the Inca, who were on the other continent. Global happiness was never an issue, which is what my inner judge would expect in a game where I'm doing well and building almost everything I need. The game was a pleasure throughut, with the Inca providing enough of a challenge that they were ahead by 2 techs very late in a game where I could have won a DV, but was playing for an SV.

Side note: I had been meaning to complain that the hammer cost of nuclear weapons is too high. And it might be. But...

I had a single A-bomb from the Manhattan Project. I dropped it on Cuzco, which was in a bay guarded by only one city, and took it with my dominating navy 5-6 turns later. That was the end of the Inca, and the effective end of the game.

EDIT:

Final global happiness:

Austria (restored, one city) 100%
Carthage 91%
France 79%
Songhai 76%
Inca 64%
Shoshone 63%
Spain 53%
Huns (—)

RIP Huns: DNF.

Sounds good.

I have some very light tweaks in store for a v2 coming soon.

- luxury cap/scaler at empire level remains same (not changing it, though I mentioned I would)
- adding a 'local luxury' bonus for each city, +1 for each unique improved luxury around a city
- created a two-tier system for handicaps - one for capital and one for other cities. Currently, all 'other city' handicaps start at one - the capital is the only one that varies by handicap.
- slightly increased empire scaler to 10% (was 8%)
- Tradition opener - dropped +1 culture and reduced food to +2, and moved +1 happiness on Palace here (made it +2). So pop bump is now happiness-neutral.
- Future tech now applies +1 happiness to every city, was +10 to capital.
- Some UI tweaks

Lingering questions:
Is the happiness/unhappiness population cap a good or a bad thing? In other words, is it exploitative, or strategic?

G

 

[Rekk]

Exploitative in my opinion. It seems very easy to hit the local happiness and unhappiness caps, and then you're immune to tourism modifier boredom, increasing needs, pillaging and city connections. The warfare-related actions especially are supposed to be a mechanic that other players are able to use against you.

 

[Stalker0]

Exploitative in my opinion. It seems very easy to hit the local happiness and unhappiness caps, and then you're immune to tourism modifier boredom, increasing needs, pillaging and city connections. The warfare-related actions especially are supposed to be a mechanic that other players are able to use against you.

I think it may be exploitive....at least at the Global Level. I wonder if Unhappy / Total Pop is the right ratio. Maybe we need to go Unhappy / Happy....and then adjust the ratios accordingly (50% should be "good", etc).

Just also noting...man I know the AI get tactical improvements, but I had no idea how good because lately I've been playing mostly passive games. Finally decided to do a little warfare....and I just got my butt handed to me. I gave up this this last game when I lost 4 units in a single turn. I am now scared to death to entry the AI's territory on Emperor...every unit I send it just gets mowed down like grass. So Kudos to the AI, I may have to go down a difficulty to survive these wars.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Lingering questions:
Is the happiness/unhappiness population cap a good or a bad thing? In other words, is it exploitative, or strategic?

G

It has some weird interaction with specialists. In the end game (particularly tradition), you want so much specialists that you will just cap in unhappiness, which mean your goal isn't to reduce unhappiness, it is to reach cap in happiness.

And I don't think the problem is the number of specialist you want (I mean, don't put that much specialists buildings if you don't want a tradition capital in the end game to have ALL of them full. And I don't have problems with cities that are can be 100% specialists as long as you worked to make it possible). The problem might be specialist unhappiness, but if you said tall was too good with lower unhappiness per specialist, I trust you.

The problem might be the cap, but then, without the cap, you have stupid things happening too...

 

[Stalker0]

So one funny issue that just occurred in my new game. Played Spain, first hut was a +1 pop. So I now I have a 3 happy / 4 unhappy ratio. Which also put me at 75% Global Unhappiness.

So now I have a wonderful -35% unit production....which affects settlers!

Hehe so rerolling this game! But yeah that's a key issue for Spain.

 

[Gazebo]

It has some weird interaction with specialists. In the end game (particularly tradition), you want so much specialists that you will just cap in unhappiness, which mean your goal isn't to reduce unhappiness, it is to reach cap in happiness.

And I don't think the problem is the number of specialist you want (I mean, don't put that much specialists buildings if you don't want a tradition capital in the end game to have ALL of them full. And I don't have problems with cities that are can be 100% specialists as long as you worked to make it possible). The problem might be specialist unhappiness, but if you said tall was too good with lower unhappiness per specialist, I trust you.

The problem might be the cap, but then, without the cap, you have stupid things happening too...

Yes, and at least with the cap things are, well, capped. I feel like 'racing to the specialist cap' on unhappiness is okay, in that the cost of maintaining that many specialists (in terms of food) does slow growth pretty precipitously.