New Beta Version - March 1st (3/1)

[BenchBreaker]

upgrading explorer whilst embarked will turn it into a permananetly embarked hover ship,

ships on land yay xD

 

[Gothic_Empire]

May I again suggest Social Policy Point system or S.P.P.

You would acquire Social policy Points through the acquisition of Social Policies
These S.P.P. can be spent to build a wonder, alongside the usual cost.

This system would have the effect of causing players who focus tech but neglect culture to have fewer point to spend on wonders, but have choices not available to their competitors. More advanced wonders could also have higher costs in S.P.P. making them a greater investment.

Players who focus culture could have more S.P.P. always having the wealth of S.P.P. to build the fewer wonders available to them, plus being able to build wonder immediately as they become available through tech unlock.

This would reduce denial style play. As to build a wonder merely to deny others can cost you a wonder that you actually want for your play style later on.

Another strategic balancing possibility is that if a wonder you have started to build is finished by some one else. perhaps you may not recieve all your S.P.P. back. Just one lever to adjust.

The Social policy point system could also cause wonders to be a bit more spread. As players who aren't close to the front of the pack may be able to save some points and catch some wonders too.

If you go for a Tech or Social policy solution similar to this current beta the S.P.P. system would mean while you may unlock multiple wonder per policy you can only build a finite number before you unlock more policies, or you could have made the choice to save points beforehand.

Other possibilities with a social policy point system are that you gain more points for each subsequent policy i.e. more point for policy number 2 than number 1 (though i wouldn't link this to its position in a policy tree but the number of policies you have, as not to punish people from dipping in trees. )

You could also perhaps award points for getting to a number of policies before other players. Ie getting to your 7th policy while others are on their 6th, though I would think this award to be only a fraction of actually unlocking the policy.

Anyway these are just some ideas that could be played with if a Social Policy Point System was implemented.

The point system also good as it is a virtual value like a currency so it can be balanced inflated and deflated unattached to the real value of social policies making it easy to balance with.

I'd try this as a mod or a modmod if you make it, but I have to admit that I resist the idea.

 

[WileyNg]

Well
I don't know why no one here seems to protest about putting Zeppelin in the recon line.
It look plain weird to me.

 

[Acken]

Gave it a try. More later. I just rolled a random civ (got incas) on a communitas map on deity everything else default/standard. I'm now on turn 123.

The idea behind the science removal is interesting but there are probably some apparent problems. First, the start of the game is probably bound to be abysmal for small/slow empires. I can't see a single reason to not just go mad on cities early. This is a problem when most of your +science comes from raw yields. It scales exceptionaly well with size. I went with a quick 7 cities as my usual self and I'm wondering why I didn't push it even further.
This brings a second problem. With that in mind a possible slow down would be to have a more effective expansion limiter. It seems you have made unhappiness easier to manage as I never dipped below -5 while it was a pain before when I expanded that fast. I think literacy and poverty seem too easy to fight off. Either expanding should be made more cautiously or "tall" empire need some help. That is if you still want to promote a tall vs wide balance.

Another issue I have noticed (which may have existed before) is the lack of normalization for strategics trading. I have been able to get 4gpt or 150+g for a single horse multiple times. This made worker buying trivial and I quickly had my 7 worker happily working all my cities (stole 2). Prices just feel wrong. I am not sure what the calculus is in the mod for these deals but the upper limit has to go down.

The first problem of wide being too good is also reflected in AI performance. While I was often 10%+ behind at this stage of the game in the previous version, I am currently only 4% behind and expect to get ahead at renaissance making the game easier than it used to be. I wouldn't be surprised if this is due to AI being too conservative with its expansion and therefore not benefitting enough of those raw +science. Granted I could focus on pure economy since the AI was really friendly.

SS of T123 situation:

Spoiler :

Edit: After a few turns I'm still behind in tech so maybe the bonuses are catching up.

 

[kaspergm]

Either expanding should be made more cautiously or "tall" empire need some help. That is if you still want to promote a tall vs wide balance.

Now I'm not playing with the Balance Patch, so I'm not going to comment on the specific balance of that - I just want to make a short general remark about the idea that tall and wide should be balanced. This was probably the most harmful idea of Civ5. Wide should be stronger than tall, with the downside being that it's much harder to defend a wide empire than a tall empire, plus it's harder to keep it happy.

A huge problem with Civ5 was that BnW made tall so good compared to wide that you'd never want to go wide. This in itself might have been a necessity because the AI was so poor at handing military that having a strong wide proved no challenge, but from a fundamental game-design point of view, it was still a bad design imo.

I do feel that Gazebo's approved and MUCH more aggressive AI does significantly better at controlling an early rapidly expanding player, at least up to renaissance era.

 

[Funak]

Another issue I have noticed (which may have existed before) is the lack of normalization for strategics trading. I have been able to get 4gpt or 150+g for a single horse multiple times. This made worker buying trivial and I quickly had my 7 worker happily working all my cities (stole 2). Prices just feel wrong. I am not sure what the calculus is in the mod for these deals but the upper limit has to go down.

I'm not one hundred percent sure but I think this might be a problem with the communitas map or possibly the strategic balance setting, strategic resources are a lot less common and a lot more powerful in CPP so I don't necessarily think paying 4 gpt for a horse is bad. I mean having knights vs not having knights makes pretty much all the difference in warfare (as it should).

 

[Pfeffersack]

@ No starving while building settlers

Wouldn't it be just logical to remove this special rule altogether? Or to let each lacking unit of Food "eat" up an hammer as penalty? It just feels like an unneeded logical hole, which can be exploited and which is likely not used by the AI (right or not?).

 

[Moi Magnus]

Wide should be stronger than tall, with the downside being that it's much harder to defend a wide empire than a tall empire, plus it's harder to keep it happy. A huge problem with Civ5 was that BnW made tall so good compared to wide that you'd never want to go wide.

I don't agree. The main reason why I'm playing Civ 5 and not another Civ is that you can stop your expansion without penalties. Usually I don't stop my expansion because of strategical decisions. I stop my expansion because I don't want to manage more cities, because more cities (and more unit) mean long turns. For me, "4 cities civ" should be as strong as "a lot of cities" not because of balance, but because of gameplay : some players (like me) just don't want to have more than 4 cities, but still want to be able to play at hight difficulty level.

 

[Funak]

@ No starving while building settlers

Wouldn't it be just logical to remove this special rule altogether? Or to let each lacking unit of Food "eat" up an hammer as penalty? It just feels like an unneeded logical hole, which can be exploited and which is likely not used by the AI (right or not?).

The problem is that this is not the special rule, this is a consequence of the real special rule, which is that you can't grow while building settlers.

I'm completely fine with your solution however, to add harsher hammer-penalties to going negative on food. I really don't care at all, to be honest.

 

[notque]

Game last night was kind of funny, I was having what I thought was a good game. Found Korea later in the game on another continent with 400+ science while everyone else in the game has 100. Funny.

 

[notque]

https://youtu.be/OJvs8epjT_w?t=5m23s Just meets new civilization, next turn tells them to stop settling near them. Didn't even know them when they settled any city.

They should have to meet you first and then have you settle to demand that.

Also, the don't settle near me thing causes challenges almost every game because you don't know where the range is. If someone told you where not to settle, they'd indicate where.

Is there anyway to have it highlight in a light color which areas the Civ doesn't want you to settle when you agree, and then in the future so you know? I understand this may be a challenge, but would solve the issue in a reasonable way.

I assume the AI knows when agreeing what "near" means, and then chooses to break the promise, or not.

Edit: You could imagine a situation where it could only be demanded when you have map trading, and by doing the demand, you should any fog of war for the area you're not allowed to settle in. That'd be a much more reasonable thing. And the demand would carry some sort of effect as well by showing fog to someone if they haven't seen the area, to tell them where they can and cannot settle. This would be outside of the borders of the Civ obviously, and only tiles that could possibly be city locations lets say.

Just an idea. Something needs to be done to address it, maybe not my first conceptions of it.

 

[DarkZero]

https://youtu.be/OJvs8epjT_w?t=5m23s Just meets new civilization, next turn tells them to stop settling near them. Didn't even know them when they settled any city.

They should have to meet you first and then have you settle to demand that.

Also, the don't settle near me thing causes challenges almost every game because you don't know where the range is. If someone told you where not to settle, they'd indicate where.

Is there anyway to have it highlight in a light color which areas the Civ doesn't want you to settle when you agree, and then in the future so you know? I understand this may be a challenge, but would solve the issue in a reasonable way.

I assume the AI knows when agreeing what "near" means, and then chooses to break the promise, or not.

It is not even about range you know, your neighbors just don't want you to ever settle any cities because they want all the land for themselves, unless it is a very friendly civ your first enemy is usually your neighbor.
If you open the diplomatic menu you can also "demand" for them to not settle near you the same time you met them as well.

 

[notque]

It is not even about range you know, your neighbors just don't want you to ever settle any cities because they want all the land for themselves, unless it is a very friendly civ your first enemy is usually your neighbor.
If you open the diplomatic menu you can also "demand" for them to not settle near you the same time you met them as well.

My understanding was there was a ranged assigned that wasn't indefinite. Unless CBP has changed that, different leaders will have different ranges, and that should be indicated so the player knows what they agreed to.

 

[DarkZero]

My understanding was there was a ranged assigned that wasn't indefinite. Unless CBP has changed that, different leaders will have different ranges, and that should be indicated so the player knows what they agreed to.

This range feels so big that it might as well be indefinite, not to mention that even if you manage to dodge it, soon enough, you will be branded whit a "you're building cities to aggressively" by the ai.

 

[Gazebo]

My understanding was there was a ranged assigned that wasn't indefinite. Unless CBP has changed that, different leaders will have different ranges, and that should be indicated so the player knows what they agreed to.

The range fluctuates quite a bit, actually. Not to mention that the model now uses a 'center of gravity' for your empire (instead of the old model, which only looked at the two closest cities).

Some AIs care a lot more than others about land, but meeting them in the early game (and having more land than them) is a near-guarantee to get a 'don't settle near us' request. Humans have the same approach towards the AI, so I don't see a problem.

G

 

[notque]

The range fluctuates quite a bit, actually. Not to mention that the model now uses a 'center of gravity' for your empire (instead of the old model, which only looked at the two closest cities).

Some AIs care a lot more than others about land, but meeting them in the early game (and having more land than them) is a near-guarantee to get a 'don't settle near us' request. Humans have the same approach towards the AI, so I don't see a problem.

G

Understood on the Why. On the how though, the AI knows where settling would be breaking the promise when they settle, correct?

 

[Putmalk]

Understood on the Why. On the how though, the AI knows where settling would be breaking the promise when they settle, correct?

When they agree to not settle, they draw a certain radius (6 hexes?) around your cities and mark them as "no settling allowed". Afaik this does not change until they agree not to settle again.

 

[notque]

When they agree to not settle, they draw a certain radius (6 hexes?) around your cities and mark them as "no settling allowed". Afaik this does not change until they agree not to settle again.

Even if they haven't see your cities from the fog?

Is it possible to make a red like 6 hexes around a city you agree to, so that you have the same benefit as the AI for understanding where not to settle?

 

[Putmalk]

Even if they haven't see your cities from the fog?

Is it possible to make a red like 6 hexes around a city you agree to, so that you have the same benefit as the AI for understanding where not to settle?

I think so. It's been awhile since I've seen the code.

I'm sure it is possible. Almost anything is possible, the question is if it'd be a welcome addition to the game or not. It'll probably be an annoying change to go, as you'd probably only want to display it when you have a settler selected, and you'd probably want some tool tips added for the tiles. So yes I'd say it's possible.

 

[notque]

I think so. It's been awhile since I've seen the code.

I'm sure it is possible. Almost anything is possible, the question is if it'd be a welcome addition to the game or not. It'll probably be an annoying change to go, as you'd probably only want to display it when you have a settler selected, and you'd probably want some tool tips added for the tiles. So yes I'd say it's possible.

Understood re:the considerations of a change. Thank you for the input.