New Beta Version - November 25th (11/25)

[Moi Magnus]

Edit: although now that I think about I do wonder if that's optimal.

Definitely not optimal. Should be fixed if possible.

It is definitely not optimal, but possibly by design: priority is tiles that are easily accessible by your peoples, and people travel faster using roads, following rivers, going through plains ... than through hills, forests or jungles. So it makes sense for those tiles to naturally be added to your empire quicker.
(I think you only pay road maintenance for roads inside your borders, which makes border growing on road actually detrimental, but I might be wrong on that)

EDIT: you can play with the coefficients in CBO/Balance Changes/CoreDefines.sql. They have name like PLOT_INFLUENCE_RESOURCE_COST. (Note that bonus ressource only get half of the bonuses for "being a resource", but still get normal points for having more yields than basic tiles). The core of the problem is that the function doesn't take in account all the bonus yields from pantheons and buildings, since tiles outside of your border do not get any bonuses, which means the game does not see that those bonuses resources will end up be worth much more than what they seems. It doesn't look easily fixable from the code structure, unfortunately.

 

[Coffee Monopoly]

Afaik you pay upkeep on roads you built in neutral terrain.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I had to spend money on all those sheep tiles, which wasn't a problem since I'm virtually drowning in cash, thanks to the pasture pantheon. Seems like that pantheon is really strong in my experience, both times I've picked it so far I've gotten incredible yields from it. Maybe it could use losing one gold on the pastures (+2 instead of +3). When you have a plains area you're usually swimming in livestock tiles, so when that pantheon is an option it's just a no-brainer. I'm not sure I've seen the AI ever get it btw. I'd say this pantheon outclasses all other improvement-dependent pantheons by a mile.

The challenge with Open Skies is founding, or at least that's what I remember from the pantheon balance thread. It gives stacks of gold, but you don't always have as much faith as early as you might like. I'm glad it worked out well for you though!

It is definitely not optimal, but possibly by design: priority is tiles that are easily accessible by your peoples, and people travel faster using roads, following rivers, going through plains ... than through hills, forests or jungles. So it makes sense for those tiles to naturally be added to your empire quicker.

I can see the logic there. And given you need food to grow I think favouring open land over hills isn't unreasonable from a gameplay point of view. River tiles are often good for building farms too.

Roads over bonus resources is a bit confusing though :/. I do like that it tends to connect your territory together because roads lead from one city to another (typically). I sure value city yields more though.

 

[Stalker0]

If I'm reading correctly, a skirmisher now has an effective 18 CS when defending in open terrain. I think the patch notes had talk about the penalties/bonuses being on offense so I wanted to confirm.

 

[civplayer33]

Added: +50% RCS/CS in/when attacking FROM open terrain; -25% RCS/CS in/when attacking FROM Rough Terrain

If I'm reading correctly, a skirmisher now has an effective 18 CS when defending in open terrain. I think the patch notes had talk about the penalties/bonuses being on offense so I wanted to confirm.

 

[Guynemer]

I think maybe a text string got messed up, but I'm not sure if it is VP or another mod. Can someone check the tech tree, whichever tech it is that allows tech trading, the special effect icon on that tech?

 

[tu_79]

In my experience borders expand naturally toward (rough priority) natural wonders, luxuries, flat land if there's no river crossing, leftover tiles in 2nd ring, flat land after a river crossing, hills, 3rd ring, sea/mountains. Those sheep tiles are just low priority, the pc doesn't know you picked the pasture pantheon.

@ilteroi
Can something be done? It's the same thing with any terrain pantheon, it forces us to buy tiles sooner than later. Unless the toll to turn time is too much, of course.

 

[Moi Magnus]

@ilteroi
Can something be done? It's the same thing with any terrain pantheon, it forces us to buy tiles sooner than later. Unless the toll to turn time is too much, of course.

I've opened an issue: https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/5903

 

[LarryAR]

I tried load an old save with the hotfix and the game crashed

Same with me. Installed 11-25-1 using installer as usual. Crash to desktop when tried to load saved game. Same after reinstall. Cache has no previous dated files in it.
Reinstalled the pre-hotfix 11-25. Works fine.

 

[Coffee Monopoly]

Quoting myself from the previous thread:

Possible minor AI bug: Early in the game, Indonesia asked me to declare a joint war against China, and I said 10 turns. About 10 turns later (don't know exactly because I didn't remember which turn he asked), he declares war on China himself without even calling me in.

Recurring bug here, the same thing happened again, this time with Gandhi(!). He asked me to declare a joint war against Darius, I said 10 turns, 10 turns later Gandhi declared by himself and didn't call me in.

Darius is not having a good time btw, while Gandhi isn't doing much damage with just a few triremes, Askia also declared on him a third time (just after the peace expired) and is now utterly steamrolling him in the Medieval era. He just took a city last turn and is about to take 2 more, including his capital. At this rate he'll be dead very soon.

Btw nice road, Dido...

Spoiler :

 

[Gazebo]

Hotfix posted, should fix savegame issue with 11-25.

G

 

[JamesNinelives]

Btw nice road, Dido...

Lol. So close and yet so far.

Recurring bug here, the same thing happened again, this time with Gandhi(!). He asked me to declare a joint war against Darius, I said 10 turns, 10 turns later Gandhi declared by himself and didn't call me in.

Are you sure it was 10 turns? Sometimes the AI feels the need to declare war earlier than the commitment you've made with them (for whatever reason), and they can't call you in that way. Although you can always join voluntarily of course.

 

[Spacellama]

Anyone else having an issue with spies in this version? My spy steals a tech almost every single turn. I think I stole 7 techs in 10 turns from the tech leader and went from second lowest to tech leader as soon as I got the first spy. Playing Japan, deity difficulty, and epic length with the hotpatch version. I can manually fix to some degree by sending the spy to a largely irrelevant CS after the first tech steal for 40 or so turns before heading back to steal another tech. The election rigging timing seems correct, just not the tech stealing. If it's just me, I'll post on github.

 

[tu_79]

Lol. So close and yet so far.


Are you sure it was 10 turns? Sometimes the AI feels the need to declare war earlier than the commitment you've made with them (for whatever reason), and they can't call you in that way. Although you can always join voluntarily of course.

AI is not calling the player on keeping his word since a few versions. I thought it was a new feature (the player has 10 turns to join the war, but he can join at any time before that), although it is very inconvenient to remember when do you exactly can enter into the war. The reminder from your friend should stay.

 

[Coffee Monopoly]

AI is not calling the player on keeping his word since a few versions. I thought it was a new feature (the player has 10 turns to join the war, but he can join at any time before that), although it is very inconvenient to remember when do you exactly can enter into the war. The reminder from your friend should stay.

Doesn't seem like a feature to me. If it is, it's garbage and couldn't be more unclear. Does anyone know for sure?

What's going on with the cost of caravel and galleass here? Why is the caravel so much more expensive in gold when it's cheaper in production?

 

[LarryAR]

Hotfix posted, should fix savegame issue with 11-25.

G

Thanks for the quick fix, G

 

[PapaRockett]

Anyone else having an issue with spies in this version? My spy steals a tech almost every single turn. I think I stole 7 techs in 10 turns from the tech leader and went from second lowest to tech leader as soon as I got the first spy. Playing Japan, deity difficulty, and epic length with the hotpatch version. I can manually fix to some degree by sending the spy to a largely irrelevant CS after the first tech steal for 40 or so turns before heading back to steal another tech. The election rigging timing seems correct, just not the tech stealing. If it's just me, I'll post on github.

I've opened an issue about this. Not sure whether it's already fixed?

Edit: Newest hotfix seems to have fixed it.

 

[randomnub]

Hotfix posted, should fix savegame issue with 11-25.

G

Cool, I guess I'll start a new game from scratch to test early diplomacy when I'm not playing as the biggest @%£"$ in town anyway Rolled (deity/continents/standard) Spain and went for Authority/early abuse, diplomacy wasn't my forte.

Quick beta report:

I'm losing (many) units to the AI. That's...embarassing, but feels good, military AI definitely improved a lot in the latest betas. I started an ancient/classical war with 8 spearmen (from early tribute days) and only 2 survived, then the AI started to snipe on the fragile ranged/siege. I better not play Japan for a bit or will feel very bad for any high promoted unit I leave exposed. AI also surprised me trading for horses (Siam had none anymore, hence it was Byz or Portugal trading/gifting them some) and quickly deploying reinforcement:

Spoiler :

Anyway, I fully embraced the latest VP military doctrine and just sent more units in the meatgrind

Playing Spain was really fun, it felt like being a deity AI myself: once my faith engine started to roll I couldn't care less about losing units. Gold was used to rushbuy landsknecht (can buy one, move outside the city in the same turn and buy more) and conquistador->settlers, Faith let me buy as many ships I could deploy. Couple that with the UA/UB and my religion picks and I had enough resources to deploy fresh troops/open a new front at will. This is basically how it evolved from early to midgame:

Spoiler :

Shrine first (switched to monument for 2 turns, then invested and finished it) into God of Expanse, for super early production. Enough warriors/spearmen to clean barbs, quick tribute and then bully everybody around. Imperium around turn 50 (and I've been unlucky, only 2 camps and no cultural CS) then pick on the pacifist AI expos before they grow out of control.

Early conquests and spam settling/borders net me a religion at ~T60: feeling Hero Worship was probably overkill, I went for Theocratic Rule and then picked Orders just to be sure no nearby AI stole it before I could enhance. Sadly India was in game and picked Veneration, that could have synergized so well... I had many small cities when I enhanced with Synagogues (follower beliefs would have net me poor yields in comparison) and Mendicancy, mostly for even more base faith/culture to feed my UA/UB/WLTKs. Zealotry would have been a good faith sink on pangea, here I had ships to buy. Nonetheless, I had so much faith I let 5 more Prophets spawn before Renaissance Reform with Defender of the Faith, I was more concerned about base city yields than more instant yields on city conquest.

By then, I already owned my continent: while my old promoted forces were taking down Constantinople a fresh wave of gold/faith bought units advanced through Portugal. I could trade caravels:Nau 3:1 and coming out ahead, Maria had not enough forces to fight on land as well, despite being slight ahead in tech and with knights/pikes at disposal.

Spoiler :

Then I realized I eradicated all possible religions except India, who didn't spread on the other continents

Spoiler :

And here I stop, going to try a peaceful game next. I made some invasion plans (settle some nearby island with conquistadors, use some generals to gain a beachhead, rush/faith buy an army or two on multiple fronts while fighting galleys with frigates... I'm 5 techs ahead of Inca and 10 ahead of Harald...) but as usual lost some motivation with new versions and new stuff to test coming out

A quick note on Conquistadors: simply put, they're tanks. I feel they could lose some strength and focus on their unique ability more, such as... being able to enter ocean. Reward exploration/find a primitive opponent and conquest other landmasses rather than being the strongest unit of their era, best on pangea fighting era-appropriate opponents. It also feels weird they settle cities with Harbor but lacking Lighthouse, the two buildings could be swapped (the latter being cheaper, and a prerequisite for the former).

 

[Recursive]

Spy stealing bug has been hotfixed by ilteroi.

Looking into bugs with the coop war counter and AI hating you for election rigging.

 

[AndreyK]

Where can I find hotfixes and how to install?