New Beta Version - March 2nd (3-2)

[Recursive]

Because only so many players speak up here, sometimes the "consensus" on changes is based on a very small number of opinions. The issue of excessive vassalization is definitely on the high end in how many people have spoken negatively about it. Some people have tried to compromise and ask for the option to play without it, but I don't see who they are compromising with. Has anyone spoken in favor of the present system?

Recursive, is this a difficult change to undo? Couldn't there be a hotfix that reverses those changes?

It is quite easy to undo, but I thought G was going to release a new version a while back.

G's commit here shows what lines of code to change: https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/commit/3fcd1dda2e4bb9fdddc741f2effc501039e2bd4e

Personally I'm not in the right headspace for any modding work right now though, sorry.

 

[dostillevi]

If players hate the AI doing this, then they should also recognize this was something a player could do all along

On this note, I've tried over and over again to get a voluntary vassal and I can't for the life of me figure out what I need to do. I've tried everything I can think of. Also I get the impression the AI is vassaling to someone the instant they think it's a decent idea, which means the player often doesn't have a chance to be considered since on harder difficulties the AI always seems to like someone else more than me, and I don't have the opportunity to negotiate for it.

Personally I'm not in the right headspace for any modding work right now though, sorry.

Sorry to hear that, take care of yourself first!

 

[pineappledan]

On this note, I've tried over and over again to get a voluntary vassal and I can't for the life of me figure out what I need to do. I've tried everything I can think of. Also I get the impression the AI is vassaling to someone the instant they think it's a decent idea, which means the player often doesn't have a chance to be considered since on harder difficulties the AI always seems to like someone else more than me, and I don't have the opportunity to negotiate for it.

in a multiplayer game, however, humans can abuse this to just lock a 3rd player out of ever winning a war.

 

[Stalker0]

Hehe you want to talk about embarrassing, when you take two cities and a capital off of China in the early game, and then they come back and ruin your whole career!

Spoiler :

For context, since taking out China I have been at wars with Egypt, Rome, and now Japan, while China vassaled to Egypt for like 15 turns of something (it was weird), and regained some strength.

So I've got enemies on all sides, so yeah not looking good!

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Hehe you want to talk about embarrassing, when you take two cities and a capital off of China in the early game, and then they come back and ruin your whole career!

Spoiler :

View attachment 591481

For context, since taking out China I have been at wars with Egypt, Rome, and now Japan, while China vassaled to Egypt for like 15 turns of something (it was weird), and regained some strength.

So I've got enemies on all sides, so yeah not looking good!

Honestly this feels just a bit of bad luck due to where your initial settler spawned; i don't think fighting 4 deity AIs at the same time in late classical/early medieval is something that happens every game let alone being a manageable issue.

 

[Stalker0]

Honestly this feels just a bit of bad luck due to where your initial settler spawned; i don't think fighting 4 deity AIs at the same time in late classical/early medieval is something that happens every game let alone being a manageable issue.

Oh agreed, this wasn’t a balance complaint just some humor

 

[Pal Laki]

On this note, I've tried over and over again to get a voluntary vassal and I can't for the life of me figure out what I need to do. I've tried everything I can think of. Also I get the impression the AI is vassaling to someone the instant they think it's a decent idea, which means the player often doesn't have a chance to be considered since on harder difficulties the AI always seems to like someone else more than me, and I don't have the opportunity to negotiate for it.

In my immortal/epic tradition game as marocco, i was able to get one. Warmonger sweden is snowballing hard, attacking civ after civ to capture more cities. He is currently at 12 cities while most civs are at 4 to 6. After he declared war on china, which was already previously weakened by him and Assyria, i got a message from China, i dont know the exact wording anymore but you will figure it out when you read it by yourself that you are probably able to voluntary vassalize them. It costed me 22gpt and one copy of every luxury. So basically they escaped their war in my favor. But if i dont stop sweden soon i can give up this game anyway though....

Edit: As you can see i wasnt really strong considering military power, and even my relations to china were not the best. I think maybe it was a mix of being scared to hell from overwhelming sweden and a lack of other options.

 

[CrazyG]

The vassal bug is really annoying and was explicitly removed years ago. It should be removed again.

Voluntary vassalage is fine but the way it instantly ends wars without repercussions isn't right. If the new master wants to intervene they should have to declare war.

1) Deity has a faster tech rate overall. I find that with Deity it takes me longer to "catch up on buildings" because my science is pushing quicker than my hammers in comparison to Immortal.
2) Deity AIs get buildings and techs quicker, so there overall yield base is higher as compared to Immortal. Therefore, I lose out on the comparative yields.
3) Deity tends to be more aggressive, and so I need to secure more units early on, at the expense of infrastructure.

These, along with the happiness problems you mention, is why I'm so positive on and unimpressed by .

Thanks for sharing your Greece game, I would have tried an autocracy push. Also note that Greece is a civ with pretty weak late game, especially since your cities no longer have tiles to grow to (which is the primary benefit of the UB).

Autocracy in particular seems to be better at almost everything than freedom or order

I think the ideology thread has a problem of taking poor feedback seriously. So many complaints about autocracy start with "I haven't ever taken this policy" so they get buffs to already powerful tools. The math isn't clear for most autocracy policies since they are more bonus yield heavy.

 

[Stalker0]

Autocracy in particular seems to be better at almost everything than freedom or order

Order is still the science king to me. Academy of Sciences I generally can get much much much earlier than I get research labs normally, and there is no bonus in the game that beats 2 free techs. Also communism saves you a LOT of GPT, its a pretty massive boost honestly. I think Freedom remains the DV king as the votes you get for its Tier 3 are a real boost, that plus Statecraft and Westminster and honestly you often don't even need a lot of CS to win DV.

Autocracy is very good, and better economically than non-warring players might expect, but it does have weaknesses. Part of the argument for autocracy being OP is the simple matter of it boosting war, which in itself is OP by design.

 

[Stalker0]

Thanks for sharing your Greece game, I would have tried an autocracy push.

In a normal scenario I completely agree, the appeasement strat was a test of the diplomacy AI to see if I really could make a rival happy by doing all the right things. Not that I think an autocracy push would have saved me either but it would have been a better strat and helped me secure late game culture.

 

[youngsteve]

Edit: As you can see i wasnt really strong considering military power, and even my relations to china were not the best. I think maybe it was a mix of being scared to hell from overwhelming sweden and a lack of other options.

I expect what has happened is other suitable candidates may well have other vassals & cannot afford to vassalise China. I find early on in particular, the costs of vassalising someone can be quite expensive, particulalry if struggling for gold. The initial cost is extremely high. Also, there doesn't seem to be any difference in cost initially whatever the size of the civ being vassalised. Surely a multi city civ should be alot more in cost than a single city one.

 

[2506]

Order is still the science king to me. Academy of Sciences I generally can get much much much earlier than I get research labs normally, and there is no bonus in the game that beats 2 free techs. Also communism saves you a LOT of GPT, its a pretty massive boost honestly. I think Freedom remains the DV king as the votes you get for its Tier 3 are a real boost, that plus Statecraft and Westminster and honestly you often don't even need a lot of CS to win DV.

Autocracy is very good, and better economically than non-warring players might expect, but it does have weaknesses. Part of the argument for autocracy being OP is the simple matter of it boosting war, which in itself is OP by design.

I agree on Order. That Freedom allows you to buy SS parts doesn't make up for the difference, unless you have a hammer-light capital and big cities. But Statecraft remains really powerful, in my opinion. I won two straight games with America going Tradition/Statecraft/Rationalism/Order (SV, DV) after losing two using Artistry. With the standard American wonder-heavy start, I had alliances with every CS in my hemisphere and beyond, and did next to nothing to maintain them. 3 votes from my vassal was all it took to win well before I could build a SS for a second SV.

 

[Recursive]

Sorry to hear that, take care of yourself first!

Thanks.

Feeling better as of today. As G seems busy, I'll merge together everyone's changes and start the work for a long term fix for this vassalage issue.

 

[mikhailk]

Feeling better as of today. As G seems busy, I'll merge together everyone's changes and start the work for a long term fix for this vassalage issue.

Long time lurker here - I just want to say I'm glad you're feeling better, and thanks for all your hard work!

 

[R3P0]

Thanks.

Feeling better as of today. As G seems busy, I'll merge together everyone's changes and start the work for a long term fix for this vassalage issue.

@Recursive thank you and everyone for all the work you do on this MOD. It truly has made Civ 5 for me a completely new and challenging game again. With everything you guys have done it truly is the definitive way to play Civ 5.

 

[Recursive]

Okay, I've coded the AI to be able to handle whether or not to accept voluntary vassalage from another civ. The challenging part is setting up the vassalage to work properly with the war declarations.

 

[stii]

Order is still the science king to me. Academy of Sciences I generally can get much much much earlier than I get research labs normally, and there is no bonus in the game that beats 2 free techs. Also communism saves you a LOT of GPT, its a pretty massive boost honestly. I think Freedom remains the DV king as the votes you get for its Tier 3 are a real boost, that plus Statecraft and Westminster and honestly you often don't even need a lot of CS to win DV.

Autocracy is very good, and better economically than non-warring players might expect, but it does have weaknesses. Part of the argument for autocracy being OP is the simple matter of it boosting war, which in itself is OP by design.

I think it was a bit hyperbole by me but Autocracy is only slightly worse at science assuming you have some vassals and just generally has much better polices. Both order and freedom run out of good polices pretty rapidly while autocracy has loads and loads of good polices to take.

 

[Recursive]

Okay, I've coded the AI to be able to handle whether or not to accept voluntary vassalage from another civ. The challenging part is setting up the vassalage to work properly with the war declarations.

Think I have it set up to work properly. Changes will be in the next version; needs testing.

Added this to the voluntary vassalage trade option:

WARNING: A master who accepts a voluntary vassal immediately declares war on everyone who is currently at war with that vassal. This may have serious consequences!

Next I will add an option to disable voluntary vassalage entirely.

Edit: Done.

 

[youngsteve]

Think I have it set up to work properly. Changes will be in the next version; needs testing.

Added this to the voluntary vassalage trade option:

WARNING: A master who accepts a voluntary vassal immediately declares war on everyone who is currently at war with that vassal. This may have serious consequences!

Next I will add an option to disable voluntary vassalage entirely.

Edit: Done.

That is like how Paradox games do it. One thing I would mention is that a civ who takes hold of a vassal at war should only join a war if the vassal is the specific target that has been declared war on. If the vassal joined a war in a pact to support another civ for instance, both should no longer be at war.

 

[Recursive]

That is like how Paradox games do it. One thing I would mention is that a civ who takes hold of a vassal at war should only join a war if the vassal is the specific target that has been declared war on. If the vassal joined a war in a pact to support another civ for instance, both should no longer be at war.

I don't see why this should be the case and don't see how it could be easily done, either. As it will be, the master will DoW everyone the vassal is at war with, then the vassal will DoW everyone the master is at war with.