New Beta Version - October 10th (10/10)

[HungryForFood]

Dude are you kidding? You are playing with extra luxuries not included in VP! That's not how things get balanced around here! Bad John.


@Gazebo Please listen to @pineappledan he summed it up better than anyone else. (@ top of page 13)

FYI: Luxuries in Civ 5 are spawned by a common script called by all map scripts (except Communitas). Depending on the map size and resource settings, there will always be about the same variety of resources (ie numbers of unique luxuries).

That mod is no different, as I've just added the new resources to that resource placement script. The new luxuries themselves function the same as any other luxury.

Now, if he was playing with JFD's original ExCE, that mod works differently as it places the new resources after the original unaltered resource placement script. Only then will there be more types of luxuries on the map than usual.

 

[glider1]

Now, on to that: the industrial slump that players notice is not a bug, and it is not intrinsically a bad thing. Having an era in which the happiness crunch hits is a powerful reminder of the 'downside' of the industrial explosion of urbanization. It is a feature of human history barely featured in Civ, and I'd be sad to see it go.

So true so true. It would be sad for me too.

 

[pineappledan]

pineappledan didn't sum it up at all; he pulled a straw man,

I wasn't criticizing the current happiness system. I think Distress has solved a lot of the issues with how helpless you felt in an unhappiness spike.

I was specifically criticizing the stop-growth argument; I really don't like how players have latched onto that as a strategy. It strikes me as an awkward, obtuse mechanic which is at odds with 4x. If people need a "panic button", it should be trading for luxuries, not a One-Child Policy.

 

[SectoidParty]

Quick question.
What file in the EUI is responsible for deleting units/display the delete dialog?
I suspect that its is the ActionInfoPanel.lua as adding the ActionInfoPanel of EUI 1.29 beta22 to the stock UI_bc would make it work.

 

[Txurce]

I agree, but I think its an okay option as a panic button (though you should try to avoid clicking avoid growth and instead just work different tiles and more specialists).

In my games, I work the hell out of specialists as a rule. When unhappiness hits, reducing specialists is the answer more often than it is adding some. (Most accurately, moving them around helps the most.) I don't work different tiles, so much as switch from hammers to gold or food (or wealth, if nothing else works) — does it make much of a difference? I keep asking about this because I am clueless as to how to avoid the Industrial avalanche. That's clueless enough to view stop-growth and switching to wealth as manna from heaven.

Anyways, speaking with everyone else, @ilteroi has been hard at work creating a 'smoothed' luxury happiness scaler that, ideally, will help with the industrial slump many players feel. Once we find a nice number for that I believe that it will resolve @pineappledan 's concern.

Now, on to that: the industrial slump that players notice is not a bug, and it is not intrinsically a bad thing. Having an era in which the happiness crunch hits is a powerful reminder of the 'downside' of the industrial explosion of urbanization. It is a feature of human history barely featured in Civ, and I'd be sad to see it go.

I've been eagerly anticipating ilteroi's scaler since he mentioned it. That and everything else aside, I also like unhappiness hitting its hardest during Industrial, for the reasons you gave. (Just not quite so hard.)

 

[Workerspam]

Something that's confusing about this statement is that it sounds like you're saying "I can't create serious unhappiness even when I try." In my game everything was fine as well by Atomic, but I have significantly more happiness problems than you. It would be great if you would lay out how you preclude unhappiness. I don't think it's as simple as being competitive in techs and SPs, having most of the the right buildings, or reducing the number of specialists. One odd aspect of happiness in my games is that a city may list distress as the #1 malus, but switching to Wealth lowers unhappiness.

In that game I purposely played recklessly as far as expansion and growth to see if I could experience serious happiness issues. India, Emperor, standard 8 civ. Completely isolated start (didn’t meet another civ until I could build caravels), 6 city initial expansion and 5 more pioneer cities. Hunt-mandirs-inspiration (cathedrals were taken)-way of transcendence-prophecy religion; even got temple of Artemis for more growth. Progress-artistry-rationalism-freedom. Generally beelined growth buildings. By atomic my capital was 46 (smaller than I expected; I blame lack of early WLTK and any trade routes to influenced civs), other cities were sitting at 18-29.

I managed happiness largely by prioritizing buildings that reduced my worse unhappiness sources or added happiness; every source of unhappiness was an issue at some point. In the industrial crunch I had to trade for luxuries to keep myself out of the negative; I bottomed out at -7. But within a few turns I was back in the positive and it was never much of an issue again.

One game doesn’t prove anything but I haven’t experienced any serious unhappiness spirals in my other games on this patch (and I did experience some wicked ones back in older patches so it’s not like my style of play is immune to them). I’ve experienced some dips when I’ve ignored lingering issues but they stabilize; I then simply have to divert resources to areas I skimped to resolve the issues.

 

[Snipergw]

This debate is not very good, there's a lack of arguments being laid out clearly and talked about in depth. BiteInTheMark is conducting himself quite inappropriately, but I see where he is coming from, and I understand the frustration. The way the Happiness system works now is unfriendly to inexperienced players and the median change didn't help whatsoever. There's a new symbol on the top bar, that is not documented and does not say anything differently when you hover it - what does it mean? I know because I read the discussions and the patch notes. Someone that was recommended VP as the ultimate Civ5 experience and just downloaded it will not. I like the idea of a slump but it hits too hard and once it hits you can't do anything about it. The "buffer" proposed before is just a finger in the dike hole, and might actually make it worse, as people said, since it would lead to people conducting bad behaviour (growth), even longer.

Especially the spiral that occurs is terrible. You should be set behind by poor happiness management, but if you fall into such a spiral it just ruins the game, and you will fall into the spiral, many many times, until you understand how VP ticks and how to avoid it. And how to avoid it isnt always intuitive. I don't really have a proposed fix (other than once again leaving my support for pure localized happiness, as suggested in the last thread), but the discussion here needs to be cleaned up. It is somewhat toxic from certain people, who needs to moderate their tone and maintain orderly conduct, but it has felt like their concerns have not really been heard and perhaps brushed over unfairly. Even if there is no bug, even if its just smoothing, there are problems, and unintuiative inelegant solutions like growth lock median feels hacky and backwards, and somewhat anti-fun. Oh well, we will see how the smoothed-scaler works, I am certain things will improve. Gazebo has never let us down in the past, even if we had rough humps sometimes.

 

[glider1]

It would solved if Gazebo stopped modding and hand played some games himself over a few weeks and tuned it to his liking. This mod is a tribute to Gazebo's talents and I would be happy to play the game according to how he thinks it should be adjusted. I don't think using the community as a judge is a good idea because the community is too large and diverse in their beliefs about the game to be of any use. The community also does not represent all interests, just the loudest interests which are not necessarily the best interests.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

In that game I purposely played recklessly as far as expansion and growth to see if I could experience serious happiness issues. India, Emperor, standard 8 civ. Completely isolated start (didn’t meet another civ until I could build caravels), 6 city initial expansion and 5 more pioneer cities. Hunt-mandirs-inspiration (cathedrals were taken)-way of transcendence-prophecy religion; even got temple of Artemis for more growth. Progress-artistry-rationalism-freedom. Generally beelined growth buildings. By atomic my capital was 46 (smaller than I expected; I blame lack of early WLTK and any trade routes to influenced civs), other cities were sitting at 18-29.

I managed happiness largely by prioritizing buildings that reduced my worse unhappiness sources or added happiness; every source of unhappiness was an issue at some point. In the industrial crunch I had to trade for luxuries to keep myself out of the negative; I bottomed out at -7. But within a few turns I was back in the positive and it was never much of an issue again.

One game doesn’t prove anything but I haven’t experienced any serious unhappiness spirals in my other games on this patch (and I did experience some wicked ones back in older patches so it’s not like my style of play is immune to them). I’ve experienced some dips when I’ve ignored lingering issues but they stabilize; I then simply have to divert resources to areas I skimped to resolve the issues.

That city sizes are not the result of reckless growing, nor is it the result of Indias UA. Its exactly the size the AI is reachin in atomic. You are completely in the aimed corridor of AI city growth.
You may come back if you are able to reach 30+ for all secondary cities before reaching atomic era. And then report again. One hint, try a pangä map, any water tile in your empire is a bad tile.
In my last game as India my secondary cities reached 33-35, then the limit was reached and I crawled at zero happiness. For some unknown reasons, after the conquest of Polynesia, I had 70 happiness. If they were killed earlier, I could have grown more.

Edit: to everyone, who is calling luxuries as a minor happiness factor, in my last India game, happiness made 72 out of my 125 happiness. That's 57%.

 

[Gazebo]

This debate is not very good, there's a lack of arguments being laid out clearly and talked about in depth. BiteInTheMark is conducting himself quite inappropriately, but I see where he is coming from, and I understand the frustration. The way the Happiness system works now is unfriendly to inexperienced players and the median change didn't help whatsoever. There's a new symbol on the top bar, that is not documented and does not say anything differently when you hover it - what does it mean? I know because I read the discussions and the patch notes. Someone that was recommended VP as the ultimate Civ5 experience and just downloaded it will not. I like the idea of a slump but it hits too hard and once it hits you can't do anything about it. The "buffer" proposed before is just a finger in the dike hole, and might actually make it worse, as people said, since it would lead to people conducting bad behaviour (growth), even longer.

Especially the spiral that occurs is terrible. You should be set behind by poor happiness management, but if you fall into such a spiral it just ruins the game, and you will fall into the spiral, many many times, until you understand how VP ticks and how to avoid it. And how to avoid it isnt always intuitive. I don't really have a proposed fix (other than once again leaving my support for pure localized happiness, as suggested in the last thread), but the discussion here needs to be cleaned up. It is somewhat toxic from certain people, who needs to moderate their tone and maintain orderly conduct, but it has felt like their concerns have not really been heard and perhaps brushed over unfairly. Even if there is no bug, even if its just smoothing, there are problems, and unintuiative inelegant solutions like growth lock median feels hacky and backwards, and somewhat anti-fun. Oh well, we will see how the smoothed-scaler works, I am certain things will improve. Gazebo has never let us down in the past, even if we had rough humps sometimes.

Right now, even if you tried to kill your empire through growth in industrial, the swing and spiral are way less crippling than before. I don’t think it is honestly possible to get in a ‘no way out’ spiral anymore. I haven’t seen that in a few versions.

G

 

[Txurce]

I managed happiness largely by prioritizing buildings that reduced my worse unhappiness sources or added happiness; every source of unhappiness was an issue at some point. In the industrial crunch I had to trade for luxuries to keep myself out of the negative; I bottomed out at -7. But within a few turns I was back in the positive and it was never much of an issue again.

One game doesn’t prove anything but I haven’t experienced any serious unhappiness spirals in my other games on this patch (and I did experience some wicked ones back in older patches so it’s not like my style of play is immune to them). I’ve experienced some dips when I’ve ignored lingering issues but they stabilize; I then simply have to divert resources to areas I skimped to resolve the issues.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. To be clear, I view spirals as dramatic multiple-turn events, and differentiate them from major unhappiness. I think the issue of spirals has been resolved, in that there are ways in which to stop the spiral and recover, eventually resuming a "normal" playstyle.

I'm now focusing on how to avoid and address that unhappiness. I also build the appropriate buildings asap, but they sometimes don't have enough of an effect. In other words, sometimes I have no therapeutic buildings left to build. And this is despite always buying every available, reasonably priced luxury as a matter of course. (When in trouble, I pay 30+g.)

 

[Workerspam]

The way the Happiness system works now is unfriendly to inexperienced players and the median change didn't help whatsoever. There's a new symbol on the top bar, that is not documented and does not say anything differently when you hover it - what does it mean? I know because I read the discussions and the patch notes. Someone that was recommended VP as the ultimate Civ5 experience and just downloaded it will not.

This is still technically a beta patch. If new players are being directed to play the beta versions then some guidance should be expected.

You may come back if you are able to reach 30+ for all secondary cities before reaching atomic era. And then report again.

This seems like a reasonable request. Look for a new post with my findings soon after your post showing the happiness issues you experienced while playing on the 10-10 patch.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

@Gazebo , I played a domination game with Rome with this version against France, Songhai, Denmark, Rome, Persia, Zulus. Won a domination victory on turn 353. Haven't seen a single enemy aircraft in all my game. Not sure if an outlier, but reporting just in case.

Also, I think religious dissent ought to be toned down a bit. A typical scenario had a city of mine with around 25 population and 20 followers, with unhappiness from religious dissent 2-3 points. That sounds excessive, especially since often I spent a missionary charge and it didn't move the number of followers even by one.

 

[Aristos]

@Gazebo , I played a domination game with Rome with this version against France, Songhai, Denmark, Rome, Persia, Zulus. Won a domination victory on turn 353. Haven't seen a single enemy aircraft in all my game. Not sure if an outlier, but reporting just in case.

Please don't tell me civ 6 code got into VP somehow...

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I hope not It was weird and it certainly made my conquering spree easier.

P.S.: Forgot to add before - Sweden was the 8th civ in that game.

 

[Rolaran]

Also, I think religious dissent ought to be toned down a bit. A typical scenario had a city of mine with around 25 population and 20 followers, with unhappiness from religious dissent 2-3 points. That sounds excessive, especially since often I spent a missionary charge and it didn't move the number of followers even by one.

I don't know if this is everyone's experience or even optimal strategy-wise, but I have found that in VP Inquisitors work much better for keeping my own cities satisfied religion-wise.

 

[CCruise]

I don't know if this is everyone's experience or even optimal strategy-wise, but I have found that in VP Inquisitors work much better for keeping my own cities satisfied religion-wise.

Yes, inquisitors are used for owned cities. I think that's their only purpose actually.

Can't wait for the new version of VP, it's shaping up to be even more glorious. Unbelievable work and effort by Mr. @Gazebo. Where can I donate?

 

[Rafs]

I don't know if this is everyone's experience or even optimal strategy-wise, but I have found that in VP Inquisitors work much better for keeping my own cities satisfied religion-wise.

i think the problem comes from religious pressure with neighbors in the long run, specially if they get stuff like extra pressure with enhancers. You'll easily have to spend inquisitors more frequently depending on your neighbors, and they aren't exactly cheap.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

In my game I even had 1 unhappiness from religious pressure in my capital, despite having complete rationalism and the grand temple, and my neighbor was venice (converted) and the celts, so you can image I wasn't getting much pressure from them, the other screenshot is a bordering town and the pressure is very hard on me. I do kind of wish there was a better way to solve this problem outside of warmongering (to take out rivals with enhacers with extra pressure) or constant faith spending on inquisitors.

 

[neo_arcadia]

I don't know if this is everyone's experience or even optimal strategy-wise, but I have found that in VP Inquisitors work much better for keeping my own cities satisfied religion-wise.

I think he meant that for city with 25 population, the number of unhappiness caused by non-majority followers are too high. I'm not on my game currently so I can't examine the number but I'm certain that you don't need to convert 100% of your citizen to have zero religion unhappiness. And if I remember correctly, for city with 20 population you need 15 citizen to follow the majority religion so that unhappiness from religion is zero.

 

[glider1]

In my game I even had 1 unhappiness from religious pressure in my capital

Rafs sorry to interrupt the train of thought but could I ask....do you run out of memory with that many cities? Do you make it all the way to information. I've never seen anything like that many cities before.