New Beta Version - May 24th (5-24)

[CrazyG]

Game report for the 5-24 version. Cultural Victory on turn 250+ as Brazil. Classic high growth specialist and golden age game. Only additional mod is Milae's difficulty mod.
Tradition-Artistry-Rationalism-Freedom, mostly peaceful (never conquered a city).
Led a religion with Goddess of Renewal, Aestheticism, Mastery, Holy Law, Symbolism, and Inspired Works.

Spoiler Story :

Good start with Brazil, can get 6 brazilwood camps in the capital. One of the rare situations I take the engineer before the artist as tradition.

We start very close to Morocco and had very little room. Went for early Brazilwood camps and stayed small, giving him wahtever he asked. Eventually he gave us friendship.

Built Hanging Gardens without an Engineer! Also got Hagia Sophia to fast enhance, and Leaning Tower since it's alwasy there. Also grabbed Sistene and Louvre, none of the other wonders mattered. Indonesia was a turn and get trying to spread his religion to my cities so I spend thousands of faith on inquisitors and lost many productive turns.
Frienship with Morocco means a peaceful game, I did help fight Indonesia when Morocco finally turned on him.

Portugal on the other continent is a runaway AI. She single handly fought her entire continent and won. Her and mine tourism together devastated the happiness of the communists so everyone is following freedom now.


In 11 turns the Great Writer will be born, then I can start the wonder project, which will probably be another 15 or so turns. I'm 99% sure I can defend my capital until then, given declarations of friendship and everyone taking Freedom. I don't want to keep ending turns so I'm calling this a win now.

Spoiler pics :

Brazil is a very good choice on this patch for his unhappiness reductions.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Has difficulty been significantly revamped since the 5/5 beta? I just played my first game on Emperor on this version, and boy has the AI swamped me! AI Nebuchadnezzar (different continent) entered Renaissance on turn 150 (standard speed), and has a 10-tech lead (33 techs on turn 160) on me. He has founded a religion and spread it a lot, but he hasn't taken Council of Elders so that's not where his science is coming from. Dido, on my continent, has also consistenly maintained a 6-tech lead on me. I'm not really used to seeing such huge gaps on Emperor, might be AI optimizations even? Looks like I'm retiring from this game, especially since with no tech stealing I have no way of catching up to such a runaway. I'll probably drop down to King for a while.

 

[Patee]

Hotfix incoming or have to wait till next version?

Just about to finish game where was really hard for AI to make peace.

Kindly asking if there will be hotfix for peace thing or it will be included in next version? (Just waaant to start new game )

 

[tothePAIN]

Game report for the 5-24 version. Cultural Victory on turn 250+ as Brazil. Classic high growth specialist and golden age game. Only additional mod is Milae's difficulty mod.
Tradition-Artistry-Rationalism-Freedom, mostly peaceful (never conquered a city).
Led a religion with Goddess of Renewal, Aestheticism, Mastery, Holy Law, Symbolism, and Inspired Works.

Spoiler Story :

Good start with Brazil, can get 6 brazilwood camps in the capital. One of the rare situations I take the engineer before the artist as tradition.

We start very close to Morocco and had very little room. Went for early Brazilwood camps and stayed small, giving him wahtever he asked. Eventually he gave us friendship.

Built Hanging Gardens without an Engineer! Also got Hagia Sophia to fast enhance, and Leaning Tower since it's alwasy there. Also grabbed Sistene and Louvre, none of the other wonders mattered. Indonesia was a turn and get trying to spread his religion to my cities so I spend thousands of faith on inquisitors and lost many productive turns.
Frienship with Morocco means a peaceful game, I did help fight Indonesia when Morocco finally turned on him.

Portugal on the other continent is a runaway AI. She single handly fought her entire continent and won. Her and mine tourism together devastated the happiness of the communists so everyone is following freedom now.


In 11 turns the Great Writer will be born, then I can start the wonder project, which will probably be another 15 or so turns. I'm 99% sure I can defend my capital until then, given declarations of friendship and everyone taking Freedom. I don't want to keep ending turns so I'm calling this a win now.

Spoiler pics :

View attachment 598716

View attachment 598715

View attachment 598714

Brazil is a very good choice on this patch for his unhappiness reductions.

My analysis on the victory conditions is that cultural victories are now the earliest possible victories (except the AI not building the building), as science has been slowed down by no tech stealing. Was this victory mostly because of Brazil’s unique tourism strength?

 

[andersw]

Has difficulty been significantly revamped since the 5/5 beta? I just played my first game on Emperor on this version, and boy has the AI swamped me! AI Nebuchadnezzar (different continent) entered Renaissance on turn 150 (standard speed), and has a 10-tech lead (33 techs on turn 160) on me. He has founded a religion and spread it a lot, but he hasn't taken Council of Elders so that's not where his science is coming from. Dido, on my continent, has also consistenly maintained a 6-tech lead on me. I'm not really used to seeing such huge gaps on Emperor, might be AI optimizations even? Looks like I'm retiring from this game, especially since with no tech stealing I have no way of catching up to such a runaway. I'll probably drop down to King for a while.

Not sure, played first game for awhile on king and AI's just caved in.
Second game on emperor, a vast difference in tech and policy speed (I failed terracotta which didnt help), doing ok in tech as Maya.
Took one city from authority Inca but he just fills up endless stream of units, consider peace out chop some and declare again when able.
Also feel the difference in damage my units take on emperor, on king you can afford sometimes to misplace or overextend, on emp a misplaced unit just dies.

 

[Stalker0]

Game report for the 5-24 version. Cultural Victory on turn 250+ as Brazil.

I'm very surprised that Morocco was so peaceful with you all game. I mean looking at the current units and the fact that he has the two CS right next to you (and I'm not seeing any big citadel formations or anything)....honestly it looks like he could have run right over you if he had wanted to.

I might have actually run through those last 25 turns or so....because if you do get close enough to victory that the AI starts to realize you have to go...I'm not sure you can hold up.

 

[wabab]

Not sure, played first game for awhile on king and AI's just caved in.
Second game on emperor, a vast difference in tech and policy speed (I failed terracotta which didnt help), doing ok in tech as Maya.
Took one city from authority Inca but he just fills up endless stream of units, consider peace out chop some and declare again when able.
Also feel the difference in damage my units take on emperor, on king you can afford sometimes to misplace or overextend, on emp a misplaced unit just dies.

I recently played a game on emperor, the AI felt... incredibly difficult compared to what it should have. Massive tech and culture leads, though I didn't get into too many wars. The ones I did I won with heavy use of citadels at choke points + hills and mountains. Granted, I wasn't playing optimally (I also used the more wonders modmod), but still, felt pretty brutal.

 

[Kiza]

I have been using this beta version and found it quite good, however when I constructed road on my vassal states, its worker always cancels it unlike its city-state counterpart. Is there anyway to prevent this?

 

[Stalker0]

Spoiler :

The tourism numbers on the right do not make sense with the base tourism times the multipliers, they are much higher than they should be. Is there something else that adds to that number?

 

[CrazyG]

I'm very surprised that Morocco was so peaceful with you all game. I mean looking at the current units and the fact that he has the two CS right next to you (and I'm not seeing any big citadel formations or anything)....honestly it looks like he could have run right over you if he had wanted to.

I might have actually run through those last 25 turns or so....because if you do get close enough to victory that the AI starts to realize you have to go...I'm not sure you can hold up.

I agree Morocco (or Portugal's navy, she could send an aircraft carrier with nukes) might still have time to give me trouble. It's possible. But to be quite honest I very strongly disagree with the current cultural victory set up. It's going to take my capital like 30 turns to build that wonder, that's with production trade routes, 5 engineers, a golden age, and tradition. You cannot invest it or use great engineers.

I've only actually built it once because it seems like such a waste of time to me. My computer gets pretty slow in the late turns, I'm not taking 2 hours of free time to press 'next turn' waiting if Morocco reacts. Just flavor wise, my oldest ally turning on me because their people like my culture doesn't make sense either.

Maybe his military beats me, but the only lesson to take from that would be don't play peacefully.

Morocco is still extremely friendly towards me (has been since like turn 60) and we have shared ideology, just fought a war together against Indonesia (Morocco had only 5 cities for most of the game). I've had basically infinite gold from Brazil's UA and Holy Law so I just buy an army whenever. Now he might be a threat, especially with berber cavalry in jungle, and because he doesn't have a border with hostile Indonesia anymore, but earlier in the game I would have been fine.

My analysis on the victory conditions is that cultural victories are now the earliest possible victories (except the AI not building the building), as science has been slowed down by no tech stealing. Was this victory mostly because of Brazil’s unique tourism strength?

Yeah Brazil gives a ton of tourism and has really strong culture. Also the UA gives based on your total golden age points, not just the cost of the golden age, so if you can stack it using a free golden age it gets really disgusting. My last bonus gave 10,000 tourism and gold.

Spoiler :

The tourism numbers on the right do not make sense with the base tourism times the multipliers, they are much higher than they should be. Is there something else that adds to that number?

I get the same thing in my games.

 

[Stalker0]

"Somewhat" of an exploit....but since AIs will war for you so long, I had a situation where Arabia finally peaced with me, but Poland held out so long that after the 10 turn peace agreement I just warred with Arabia again to test, and yes it turned out Poland peaced with me like 2 turns later. Aka defensive pact wars do not reset (and they were still DPs) after a peace and a new war.

 

[Gazebo]

Spoiler :

View attachment 598799

The tourism numbers on the right do not make sense with the base tourism times the multipliers, they are much higher than they should be. Is there something else that adds to that number?

instant yield tourism goes there IIRC.

 

[Stalker0]

So most of my games I change strategic resources so that there are more strategic plots, but each plot has much less resources per plot. In general I find it lowers the strategic value a good bit without making them super scarce, and also tends to ensure people get a least a little bit of the resource (though coal is still very very scarce on Communitas_79 sometimes).

So in this last game I went back to normal (mainly by accident)....my gosh I forgot how many strategics you get by default. I'm just swimming in iron and horses and I'm not even that wide. No wonder people were making so much money on previous versions when strategic resources sold for a lot!

 

[Stalker0]

Another oddity on this version, the AI does seem really asleep at the wheel with wonders sometimes. There are always the usual suspects (Roman Forum and Leaning Tower are commonly available much later than you would expect them to be).

But this game....Borobodur, normally a hot wonder imo. But this game, the world is an era past Theology and no one has built it....that's weird.

 

[azum4roll]

Imperialism isn't giving water tiles the production and science it's supposed to give in this version... (reported)

 

[andersw]

Another oddity on this version, the AI does seem really asleep at the wheel with wonders sometimes. There are always the usual suspects (Roman Forum and Leaning Tower are commonly available much later than you would expect them to be).

But this game....Borobodur, normally a hot wonder imo. But this game, the world is an era past Theology and no one has built it....that's weird.

A guess and Im hopeful this is somewhat the case is that the AI goes for wonders that it WANTS and not just because its available.
I dont find Borobodur attractive at all as warmonger ...
I missed on Terracotta current game but I did get Hanging gardens despite a bit late, used to be borderline impossible for me on emperor, (with cocoa it was really nice to get the free garden) and great library got built even later.

 

[Kiza]

From my playthrough, AI invests too much in land units and doesn't bother with navy, which makes the battle quite easy.

 

[Stalker0]

Spoiler :

So while this is a tiny little force from Poland, its impressive to see the AI thinking in such a wide sphere. Poland is stuck on the eastern side against my strong garrison, and has made no progress in this war. So now he has come all the way across the ocean to buddy up with Arabia and try a little pressure here....good thinking.

UPDATE: Turned out not to be just a tiny force, but a solid one by Poland. I still beat it, but it was a nice surprise move!

 

[Stalker0]

So a note on War weariness. From just a "feel" standpoint, I've been engaged with Arabia for a loooong time now. I have a -75% production modifier to units (I believe its supposed to be 45% but I think there is a bug).

So in terms of its effect, yeah I would like to peace out, I can only really regenerate troops from my best cities, otherwise it takes like 10 turns to produce a unit.

And yet....I've killed so many Arabian units I've lost count. And it still feels like they just poof out new Camel Archers like magic. I'm not really feeling that Arabia is suffering war weariness like I am, even though I am killing far more units overall.

 

[azum4roll]

Camels are really cheap though, compared to the units you have.