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

[Cat-du-fromage]

i'm talking about the score, since i was used to the EUI one, i was wondering if the "return" to the vanilla version was intentional.

EDIT: With the EUI we used to have the exact number of technologie, policies rather than the score

 

[Gazebo]

i'm talking about the score, since i was used to the EUI one, i was wondering if the "return" to the vanilla version was intentional.

EDIT: With the EUI we used to have the exact number of technologie, policies rather than the score

I didn't touch any of that code.

 

[Dolen]

I'm really loving the change of happiness system right now!
It seems more controllable, and building happiness modifier actually means something now.

However, the question I had while playing was "what's the point of acquiring more luxuries, if they give nothing to most cities I have unless their pop grow to a certain point?", as someone already mentioned.
Maybe, there needs to be some balancing... I dunno know lol

 

[Moi Magnus]

EDIT: With the EUI we used to have the exact number of technologie, policies rather than the score

I've never seen that. I don't think it ever was like that in the VP version of the EUI.
It may be in a latter version of the EUI (VP doesn't use the last one)

Or maybe that's one of the UI mods I use which disable that?

 

[Gazebo]

What do you think about this idea for luxuries:

1. Keep the luxury 'empire' pop scaler, perhaps make it slightly more potent than now, that scales off of overall owned luxuries.
2. Add a local resource scaler that gives a city happiness for each unique resource (not necessarily luxury) owned and improved by the city.

#2 would not discriminate against resources controlled by other cities or imported, so it would actually give value to settling multiple copies of resources beyond just the benefit of the tile's yields (or monopolies).

Thoughts?
G

 

[crdvis16]

@Gazebo you might want to take a look at the Venice AI and make sure it's handling the happiness changes. It's very easy to fall into a happiness trap if some combination of the following occur:

1) you take too long to puppet a CS
2) you have luxes that aren't connected quickly
3) you don't find natural wonders quickly

As a player you can adjust next game after seeing it happen but I think the AI would be likely to fall into this trap repeatedly and the Venice AI is already in a tough spot to begin with.

Venice seems particularly vulnerable to this because settling secondary cities seems to initially help your happiness and bridges the gap to things like luxes getting connected, etc but of course Venice might get their 2nd city a bit later than others.

 

[Gazebo]

@Gazebo you might want to take a look at the Venice AI and make sure it's handling the happiness changes. It's very easy to fall into a happiness trap if some combination of the following occur:

1) you take too long to puppet a CS
2) you have luxes that aren't connected quickly
3) you don't find natural wonders quickly

As a player you can adjust next game after seeing it happen but I think the AI would be likely to fall into this trap repeatedly and the Venice AI is already in a tough spot to begin with.

Venice seems particularly vulnerable to this because settling secondary cities seems to initially help your happiness and bridges the gap to things like luxes getting connected, etc but of course Venice might get their 2nd city a bit later than others.

Are you seeing an issue? Or just presuming? Because the tests I ran with Venice saw no issue.

 

[DeAnno]

2. Add a local resource scaler that gives a city happiness for each unique resource (not necessarily luxury) owned and improved by the city.

This is a really cool idea actually, I think it'd be nice in making some of the weaker bonus resources have a bit more of an effect on cities, especially on the 3rd ring. All too often random desert wheat is just kind of depressing.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Are you seeing an issue? Or just presuming? Because the tests I ran with Venice saw no issue.

For what it's worth, I'm currently playing a Tradition/Artistry/? Venice and have had no issues whatsoever (so far through 215 turns). I was aided early by finding 2 natural wonders, but had a slow start overall; I started through the bottom tech line and didn't have a single lux for almost 100 turns thanks to jungle locked plantations. I didn't even get my second puppet (3rd city) until around turn 150, but now I'm at 5 puppets and there hasn't been one instance of me dropping passed 90% happy. I also havn't been helped by any religion at all, and am just converting my cities now via the AI.

Neighboring China has had free reign for expansion, and has twice the score of the next player (me), yet I'm only 2 techs and policies behind through my TR spam. I'm really tempted to just start another game with a different civ, as Venice probably isn't the best civ for experimenting with the new system.

 

[Rekk]

i'm talking about the score, since i was used to the EUI one, i was wondering if the "return" to the vanilla version was intentional.

EDIT: With the EUI we used to have the exact number of technologie, policies rather than the score

Hover over the portrait. You should get exact tech and policy count.

 

[DonStill]

What do you think about this idea for luxuries:

1. Keep the luxury 'empire' pop scaler, perhaps make it slightly more potent than now, that scales off of overall owned luxuries.
2. Add a local resource scaler that gives a city happiness for each unique resource (not necessarily luxury) owned and improved by the city.

#2 would not discriminate against resources controlled by other cities or imported, so it would actually give value to settling multiple copies of resources beyond just the benefit of the tile's yields (or monopolies).

Thoughts?
G

I was thinking of a flat yield on a resource quantity basis for each city. Maybe make it having your first cotton resource provide .33 or .5 gold, then a diminishing scaling for each subsequent cotton. Something like .25 for the second, then .20 for the third, etc.. Actual values would scale with resource rarity or the yield type.

Might be a bit too complicated and throw balance into a weird place, but it might incentivize expanding for a monopoly early on. Or even replace the additive yields from a monopoly into something like this. Thoughts?

 

[vyyt]

it it intentional we have the "old" UI version style without the real number of tech/policies, cities etc..?

Also, shouldn't the leader badges have a border (colored by their attitude towards you)?

 

[John.B.C]

Are you seeing an issue? Or just presuming? Because the tests I ran with Venice saw no issue.

He's presuming it's Venice, when it's acctually the tradition opener that is the problem, as have been reported in this thread earlier. When the capital hit size 6 it just goes out of hand from there.

I have this beautiful starting location [Ottomans] and did everything like I usually do when going tradition. But before stonehenge is complete, when picking my first policy, my empire is now very unhappy with 50% unhappiness. And with all the rebells that are spawning, together with a camp I now won't be able to kill (due to -20 combat). I will have to let this game go.

I mean if I in previous versions I would have hit 1 or 0 (?) happiness at size 6, in this patch rebells are spawning and I get -20 percent combat value. My lonley warrior together with an pathfinder could only stand and watch while 3 brutes together with an archer was attacking my Capital, killing women and children and looting everything.

 

[crdvis16]

He's presuming it's Venice, when it's acctually the tradition opener that is the problem, as have been reported in this thread earlier. When the capital hit size 6 it just goes out of hand from there.



I mean if I in previous versions I would have hit 1 or 0 (?) happiness at size 6, in this patch rebells are spawning and I get -20 percent combat value. My lonley warrior together with an pathfinder could only stand and watch while 3 brutes together with an archer was attacking my Capital, killing women and children and looting everything.

Yep, I'm presuming the ai would have trouble based on my own experience playing them so if G took a look at that already and they handle it well then the ai is fine.

I think Venice is just particularly vulnerable to this early window of happiness woes because they can't always easily settle a second city as a bridge until they get to their luxes or find natural wonders or whatever.

As a player I'm just focusing production more in the beginning when I plan to open tradition to limit growth a little until happiness is safer.

 

[Cat-du-fromage]

Hover over the portrait. You should get exact tech and policy count.

WHAT A DUMB !!!! i'm really stupide

thanks

Also, shouldn't the leader badges have a border (colored by their attitude towards you)?

i'm in observer mod using firetune 2, so it's normal in that case^^

 

[bigcat88]

Totally new happiness system
Can someone explain in a few words, how much it is friendly now? Is it more easy to manage happiness or not?

Did someone already try Domination Venice with tons of puppets with this version?

 

[Moi Magnus]

Totally new happiness system
Can someone explain in a few words, how much it is friendly now? Is it more easy to manage happiness or not?

Main differences:
+ Instead of having "reduce poverty need by X%" buildings, you have "reduce poverty unhappiness by 1".
+ Specialists, luxuries, and some other stuff give LOCAL happiness/unhappiness instead of global ones.
+ If a city has positive happiness, it has growth bonuses. If a city has negative happiness, it has penalty to growth and to producing units.
+ Instead of a "global happiness" which gives bonuses like the old +10% to everything, you have "number of non-unhappy citizens / total number of citizens" that gives you some maluses if it goes under 75%.

More subtle remarks:
+ We're back on a global median (so your goal is to produce more yields than the other civs)
+ To decrease poverty by 1 in a city, you have to increase gold production by "1 per citizen in the city".
+ Number of techs, number of cities (puppets count half), and number of citizens, increase the needs of cities.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I think Venice is just particularly vulnerable to this early window of happiness woes because they can't always easily settle a second city as a bridge until they get to their luxes or find natural wonders or whatever.

If you read my post above, you'd see that I went Tradition Venice with no problems (the complete opposite in fact), even with delayed luxuries and puppets. I found 2 early natural wonders though, and had a long run of WLTKD from Mausoleum of Hali.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Here's my feedback playing on same settings as I've been using for previous patches (Prince difficulty, Huge map, Epic Speed) : the gameplay feels very different.

First up, I get 5 free happiness per city now, rather than in total? I think that's way too much - it seems that it's impossible for citizens in a city to be unhappy until it grows beyond size 6? Instead of happiness being the main factor limiting my expansion and encouraging development it's been a complete non-issue.

I discovered a couple of natural wonders within the first 100 or so turns, and have access to +1 happy per city via Progress, but I really haven't needed it. For what it's worth I think those are both excellent and feel much more useful than they did before, so that's great. The difficulty handicap on top of that though is making happiness feel meaningless.

You might guess that things were going pretty smoothly for me early-game as a result of this. Actually the game was rushing past a lot faster than normal. I founded a religion second (better than usual) and settled some very nice city locations, all while maintaining a reasonably strong military (about 2 units per city, including some horsemen).

At which point I noticed that the AI were doing even better than me. I knew Spain was doing fairly well because they founded around turn 100 (which is early but not unheard of). I didn't notice quite how well until they declared war on be and attacked with an army I've never seen the likes of this early in the games. I'm a very defensive player, and happily I had taken Goddess of Protection and was playing Shoshone who get a combat bonus in their own territory. So I was OK.

Looking at the map and the leaderboards though, I decided to call it a day. I might be do fine defensively, but all the AI on my continent seemed to be performing maybe 20-30% better than what I'm used to competing with. If I played this map again and knew what was coming, I'm sure I could manage. I have a feeling settler spam would be a winning strategy. That's not really how I like to play though.

Spoiler Screenshot :

To conclude, I should make it clear I'm not trying to shoot down the happiness overhaul. I think it's a great change, it looks like it will be a lot of fun, and it just needs tweaking in some areas. The handicap bonus would be my first suggestion.

 

[crdvis16]

If you read my post above, you'd see that I went Tradition Venice with no problems (the complete opposite in fact), even with delayed luxuries and puppets. I found 2 early natural wonders though, and had a long run of WLTKD from Mausoleum of Hali.

Yep, I'm able to do so as well. But I also had a game where I opened tradition (getting to 5 pop as a result) without having found a natural wonder and ended up with rebels shortly thereafter. It's literally 1 or 2 happiness from finding a natural wonder or having an easy to connect lux that makes the difference. After that initial danger window happiness is pretty easy to manage from what I can tell.

Oh, I was also playing on deity so they smaller amount of 'happiness from difficulty' is likely a difference too. Which makes me realize that if the AI has larger innate happiness than a deity player then it makes sense that the AI could avoid this early happiness trap consistently, even as Venice.