New Beta Version - October 23rd (10-23)

[pineappledan]

Your turn is before the AI’s. You have a first mover advantage over the AI, and so if you AI beat you to a wonder, that means they beat you by 1 full turn.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

K thanks, I always figured as much. The mod just caused me some confusion when it states "you are beating playerX to Great Wall by 1 turn", only for me to lose the wonder. I'll keep this in mind moving forward.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

@Recursive , One of my last remaining curiosities (not version specific), but what's the deal with good deeds not being greatly acknowledged or recognized on a global scale? How much does the AI currently value things that should be of global significance, such as liberating cities, CS, or resurrecting fallen civs? From my experience, I don't think I've ever seen opposing civs (friendly or otherwise) be overly grateful for some of the larger positive actions that may be accomplished. It seems as if it's almost always a "meh" reaction, at most, regardless of how beneficial or positive your action was toward the game's overall diplomatic landscape. Just wanted to see if others have also witnessed the same prevalence of "Xciv will barely notice". What are the numbers like under the hood concerning the best possible outcomes or diplomatic rewards for undertaking the most positive/beneficial of deeds?

P.S. I'll stop my nitpicking for the time being as I'm running out of things to squawk about, which is definitely a good thing. Also, do you have any ideas or hints as to when we can potentially expect the new version? Maybe a little ETA tease? I won't bother Zebo, and I normally wouldn't ask, but all the juicy new diplo goodies/fixes have me foaming in anticipation of the new version - I can't even bring myself to finish my current game. I don't think I've ever really looked forward to a new release as much as I'm now looking forward to this one. I'm sure what the VP team is about to hand out leans more heavily towards the "treat" side of the scale, than the "trick" side...

 

[JamesNinelives]

Yeah, that's a tough one, but they can be vewy vewy shneaky! I've seen plenty of instances where AI basically decide they're going to insta-build a wonder and completely screw you over, and other times where they will back off and concede; I think it's just situational. I personally use the "Wonder Race" mod (forgot to mention previously in another thread that it's the only other "cheat" mod I use) for two main reasons, one of which others and yourself have already pointed out in that the culture received is so trivial on a loss relative to how many hammers/gold you've used; I get it, but it still sucks. The other reason being the player will always lose a tie-breaker to the AI if both finishing wonders on the same turn. So since I technically have to beat the AI by a turn, and will essentially get nothing if I lose out, I compromise for now by using the mod.

I had a recent Egypt game where multiple AI stole unique burial tomb artifacts shortly after spies came out. It was a definite ouch... Although the AI trade willingness for GWorks was just reduced, it's made theming bonuses a lot harder. Maybe we can nudge it back up a tick?

Feel better, fella.

Also, don't worry, the majority of feedback here (especially mine) is critical/negative, simply because VP is so great and we love it so much that we have to excessively nitpick about the finer details. I assume Zebo has some pretty thick skin by this point through his profession and after having dealt with the likes of Bite, PDan, myself and others over the years .

Thank you <3.

 

[Recursive]

@Recursive , One of my last remaining curiosities (not version specific), but what's the deal with good deeds not being greatly acknowledged or recognized on a global scale? How much does the AI currently value things that should be of global significance, such as liberating cities, CS, or resurrecting fallen civs? From my experience, I don't think I've ever seen opposing civs (friendly or otherwise) be overly grateful for some of the larger positive actions that may be accomplished. It seems as if it's almost always a "meh" reaction, at most, regardless of how beneficial or positive your action was toward the game's overall diplomatic landscape. Just wanted to see if others have also witnessed the same prevalence of "Xciv will barely notice". What are the numbers like under the hood concerning the best possible outcomes or diplomatic rewards for undertaking the most positive/beneficial of deeds?

P.S. I'll stop my nitpicking for the time being as I'm running out of things to squawk about, which is definitely a good thing. Also, do you have any ideas or hints as to when we can potentially expect the new version? Maybe a little ETA tease? I won't bother Zebo, and I normally wouldn't ask, but all the juicy new diplo goodies/fixes have me foaming in anticipation of the new version - I can't even bring myself to finish my current game. I don't think I've ever really looked forward to a new release as much as I'm now looking forward to this one. I'm sure what the VP team is about to hand out leans more heavily towards the "treat" side of the scale, than the "trick" side...

Resurrecting a civ will get you a permanent +200 opinion bonus with them and clear all previous negative penalties. They also will get an approach bonus and will tend to be more cooperative with you (I added code a few versions ago so they won't send you insults and will automatically agree to things like not converting your cities, for instance).

Liberating AI cities gets you a +30/+50/+60 opinion bonus with that AI for liberating 1/2/3+ cities. The bonus is set to zero if you declare war on them (DP doesn't count). Otherwise, if you haven't liberated one of their cities for one deal duration (50 turns on standard, I believe) it is halved, and after 2x deal duration it is set to zero, although it doesn't reset the # of cities liberated. Liberating a city resets the timer for the bonus.

Liberating City-States gives you a large Influence boost and all other civs' Influence are set to zero.

Liberating AI cities (civ or City-State) will not currently get you diplo bonuses with other AIs besides the liberated civ, although liberation (depending on the size of the city and some other factors) will reduce your warmonger amount.

I have no idea when the next version will come out. I know G's been busy with work, so I don't know what kind of timeline you're looking at.

I'm happy you're looking forward to the new diplo fixes, but don't get too excited yet. First, the new settings I'm working on are experimental and may need bugfixing, and second, I still have work to do re: backstabbing penalties, military posture calculation and warmongering; my planned changes there are not done yet.

I can give you a "teaser" list of what I've worked on so far, assuming it actually works

Settings
- Added "Disable Victory Competition" setting, when set to 1 it disables the AI's Victory Dispute/Victory Block/Is Close to X Victory changes towards other players
- Added "Passive AI (Human Only)" setting, when set to 1 the AI will not initiate any wars involving human players, but humans can still DoW the AI
- Added "Passive AI (Global)" setting, when set to 1 the AI will not initiate any wars with other players, including City-States, but humans can still DoW the AI
- Passive AI settings will be overridden if humans ask AI teammates to start a coop war
- Passive AI settings prevent AIs from asking humans for coop wars or asking/offering third party war to them in trade (humans can still ask this of the AI)
- Passive AI settings prevent AIs from pursuing Domination Victories
- All of these are experimental, disabled by default and can be modified via one of the text files

Fixes
- Fixed some bugs in the approach calculation
- Fixed AI getting mad about Influence competition with their permanent CS allies or those with an Open Door resolution
- Fixed AI offering or accepting DoFs with players they're willing to denounce
- (Hopefully) fixed AI never keeping its promises not to dig up artifacts
- Removed opinion penalty for refusing to move your troops when asked
- Removed backstabbing penalties between human players in multiplayer
- Fixed World Map trade item being greyed out without explanation (hopefully)
- Fixed bug where AI teammates would never be willing to start a coop war immediately; now they can if they're bold enough and the target is vulnerable, just like regular AIs
- Fixed AI teammates of humans accepting third party war bribes and starting coop wars with others
- AI should be MUCH less likely to backstab its own friends and DPs now, or to start wars that cause its teammates to backstab their friends/DPs.
They will no longer do so when insulted or as the result of a coop or third party war. They will also not target people for demands if declaring war on them would mean backstabbing someone else.

Improvements
- Added a temporary opinion penalty for stealing a civ's artifacts, regardless of if a promise is made (can no longer steal one artifact per civ with no penalty); the penalty's
magnitude and duration worsens if more artifacts are stolen, and lowers a bit if you make a promise to stop and keep it
- Note that the penalty will decay, but cannot fully disappear until the AI has confronted you about the stolen artifacts, unless you're playing in multiplayer or it's a permanent war
- AI will refuse to give Open Borders to players who plunder their artifacts, if there are still artifacts for that player to plunder
- Maximized AI war desire and tactical aggression if the "Always War" or "Permanent War or Peace" advanced settings are enabled (used in RAS and scenarios)
- Increased AI war desire and tactical aggression towards its most threatening enemies and competitors; for instance, the owner of their original capital
- AI is slightly more aggressive when backed up by a third party in war (coop war/trade)
- AIs who are insulted are more reluctant to declare war on players they're AFRAID of, and more reluctant to DoW if it would also mean DoW'ing powerful neighbors
- Added "approach guess" mechanic: AIs will guess other human/AI approaches towards them based on certain actions. Demands, insults and denouncing them will set their approach guess to HOSTILE if it isn't already
WAR; if a player's military deployment is extremely threatening or intrigue sharing reveals a civ's war plans, it will be set to WAR. The guess system understands AI players' approach system, so for instance, they will reset guesses
for the DECEPTIVE or FRIENDLY approaches if the visible approach of an AI player towards them isn't FRIENDLY. Approach guesses are not permanent and updated every 30 turns or when circumstances change
- AI will refuse coop wars, giving/taking Open Borders and third party war bribery from players who it guesses to have the HOSTILE or WAR approaches towards them, to avoid falling into traps
- AI will also refuse these requests from players who have backstabbed them or broken a promise not to attack them, for the same reason
- If "Disable Victory Competition" is enabled or you've resurrected them, AIs will no longer refuse to take your Open Borders for Tourism reasons
- Added functionality for the AI to calculate how much GPT will be lost if war is declared (still WIP, not used yet)
- If AI has no cities but is still alive (Complete Kills setting), and it somehow captures a city, it will not liberate that city, no matter how many diplo bonuses it would get from doing so :)
- Tweaked reckless expander penalty: won't apply unless you have more cities than the AI. Also, if a City-State has 2+ cities they will count towards the global average

ilteroi's improvements (not my doing, but worth mentioning)
- Improved AI strength assessments of other players
- Fixed AI not targeting Barbarian cities

Other
- AI should no longer get a Production discount on projects like the Apollo Program
- Spies should no longer consider Public Works or any custom repeatable project intrigue-worthy (repeatable projects are not noteworthy constructions)

Edit: I've been editing this list over the past few hours as I make more changes, and it should be complete for now. My most significant edit was the fix preventing the AI from stupidly backstabbing others; they should be much smarter about this going forward.

 

[pineappledan]

I have no idea when the next version will come out. I know G's been busy with work, so I don't know what kind of timeline you're looking at.

Also, it's only been 10 days. There's still plenty to try out this patch. This is only the 2nd weekend with this latest update; it would be good sense to wait for a few more peoples' playthrough reports

 

[Stalker0]

Resurrecting a civ will get you a permanent +200 opinion bonus with them and clear all previous negative penalties. They also will get an approach bonus and will tend to be more cooperative with you (I added code a few versions ago so they won't send you insults and will automatically agree to things like not converting your cities, for instance).

Liberating AI cities gets you a +30/+50/+60 opinion bonus with that AI for liberating 1/2/3+ cities. The bonus is set to zero if you declare war on them (DP doesn't count). Otherwise, if you haven't liberated one of their cities for one deal duration (50 turns on standard, I believe) it is halved, and after 2x deal duration it is set to zero, although it doesn't reset the # of cities liberated. Liberating a city resets the timer for the bonus.

Liberating City-States gives you a large Influence boost and all other civs' Influence are set to zero.

Liberating AI cities (civ or City-State) will not currently get you diplo bonuses with other AIs besides the liberated civ, although liberation (depending on the size of the city and some other factors) will reduce your warmonger amount.

I have no idea when the next version will come out. I know G's been busy with work, so I don't know what kind of timeline you're looking at.

I'm happy you're looking forward to the new diplo fixes, but don't get too excited yet. First, the new settings I'm working on are experimental and may need bugfixing, and second, I still have work to do re: backstabbing penalties, military posture calculation and warmongering; my planned changes there are not done yet.

I can give you a "teaser" list of what I've worked on so far, assuming it actually works

Settings
- Added "No Victory Competition" setting, when set to 1 it disables the AI's Victory Dispute/Victory Block/Is Close to X Victory changes towards other players
- Added "Passive AI (Human Only)" setting, when set to 1 the AI will not initiate any wars involving human players, but humans can still DoW the AI
- Added "Passive AI (Global)" setting, when set to 1 the AI will not initiate any wars with other players, including City-States, but humans can still DoW the AI
- Passive AI settings will be overridden if humans ask AI teammates to start a coop war
- Passive AI settings prevent AIs from asking humans for coop wars or asking/offering third party war to them in trade (humans can still ask this of the AI)
- Passive AI settings prevent AIs from pursuing Domination Victories
- All of these are experimental, disabled by default and can be modified via one of the text files

Fixes
- Fixed AI not targeting Barbarian cities (ilteroi's doing, not mine, but worth noting since it affects diplo AI)
- Fixed some bugs in the approach calculation
- Fixed AI getting mad about Influence competition with their permanent CS allies or those with an Open Door resolution
- Fixed AI offering or accepting DoFs with players they're willing to denounce
- (Hopefully) fixed AI never keeping its promises not to dig up artifacts
- AI will no longer declare war on their own friends/DPs because a human insulted them
- Removed opinion penalty for refusing to move your troops when asked
- Removed backstabbing penalties between human players in multiplayer
- Fixed World Map trade item being greyed out without explanation (hopefully)
- Fixed bug where AI teammates would never be willing to start a coop war immediately; now they can if they're bold enough and the target is vulnerable, just like regular AIs
- Fixed AI teammates of humans accepting third party war requests/bribes from non-teammates

Improvements
- Added a temporary opinion penalty for stealing a civ's artifacts, regardless of if a promise is made (can no longer steal one artifact per civ with no penalty); the penalty's
magnitude and duration worsens if more artifacts are stolen, and lowers a bit if you make a promise to stop and keep it
- Note that the penalty will decay, but cannot fully disappear until the AI has confronted you about the stolen artifacts, unless you're playing in multiplayer or it's a permanent war
- AI will refuse to give Open Borders to players who plunder their artifacts, if there are still artifacts for that player to plunder
- Maximized AI war desire and tactical aggression if the "Always War" or "Permanent War or Peace" advanced settings are enabled (used in RAS and scenarios)
- Increased AI war desire and tactical aggression towards its most threatening enemies and competitors; for instance, the owner of their original capital
- AI is slightly more aggressive when backed up by a third party in war (coop war/trade)
- AIs who are insulted are more reluctant to declare war on players they're AFRAID of, and more reluctant to DoW if it would also mean DoW'ing powerful neighbors
- Added "approach guess" mechanic: AIs will guess other human/AI approaches towards them based on certain actions. Demands, insults and denouncing them will set their approach guess to HOSTILE if it isn't already
WAR; if a player's military deployment is extremely threatening or intrigue sharing reveals a civ's war plans, it will be set to WAR. The guess system understands AI players' approach system, so for instance, they will reset guesses
for the DECEPTIVE or FRIENDLY approaches if the visible approach of an AI player towards them isn't FRIENDLY. Approach guesses are not permanent and updated every 30 turns or when circumstances change
- AI will refuse coop wars, giving/taking Open Borders and third party war bribery from players who it guesses to have the HOSTILE or WAR approaches towards them, to avoid falling into traps
- AI will also refuse these requests from players who have backstabbed them or broken a promise not to attack them, for the same reason
- If "No Victory Competition" is enabled or you've resurrected them, AIs will no longer refuse to take your Open Borders for Tourism reasons
- Added functionality for the AI to calculate how much GPT will be lost if war is declared (still WIP, not used yet)
- If AI has no cities but is still alive (Complete Kills setting), and it somehow captures a city, it will not liberate that city, no matter how many diplo bonuses it would get from doing so :)
- Tweaked reckless expander penalty: won't apply unless you have more cities than the AI. Also, if a City-State has 2+ cities they will count towards the global average

Other
- AI should no longer get a Production discount on projects like the Apollo Program
- Spies should no longer consider Public Works or any custom repeatable project intrigue-worthy (repeatable projects are not noteworthy constructions)

Astounding!!!! Thank you so very much!

 

[usadefcon1]

Wow, a great update!

- Removed opinion penalty for refusing to move your troops when asked

Just making sure I understand this: if the AI asks me to move troops and I say No there is no penalty, but a promise not to attack is generated? (and if I break that promise there are worldwide diplomatic consequences)

 

[Recursive]

Wow, a great update!


Just making sure I understand this: if the AI asks me to move troops and I say No there is no penalty, but a promise not to attack is generated? (and if I break that promise there are worldwide diplomatic consequences)

I removed the permanent opinion penalty for selecting the "You're right to worry, and it's time for you to die. (DECLARE WAR)" option.

The "We mean no harm. Our troops are merely passing through the area." option creates a 20 turn promise not to declare war on them. If you break this, you will receive a permanent penalty to opinion with all civs, and a larger one with the civ you lied to.

I will work on the second option soon, but for now being honest and declaring war = no extra penalty, and making a promise and keeping it for 20 turns = no penalty.

 

[Gazebo]

Yeah, that's a tough one, but they can be vewy vewy shneaky! I've seen plenty of instances where AI basically decide they're going to insta-build a wonder and completely screw you over, and other times where they will back off and concede; I think it's just situational. I personally use the "Wonder Race" mod (forgot to mention previously in another thread that it's the only other "cheat" mod I use) for two main reasons, one of which others and yourself have already pointed out in that the culture received is so trivial on a loss relative to how many hammers/gold you've used; I get it, but it still sucks. The other reason being the player will always lose a tie-breaker to the AI if both finishing wonders on the same turn. So since I technically have to beat the AI by a turn, and will essentially get nothing if I lose out, I compromise for now by using the mod.

I had a recent Egypt game where multiple AI stole unique burial tomb artifacts shortly after spies came out. It was a definite ouch... Although the AI trade willingness for GWorks was just reduced, it's made theming bonuses a lot harder. Maybe we can nudge it back up a tick?

Feel better, fella.

Also, don't worry, the majority of feedback here (especially mine) is critical/negative, simply because VP is so great and we love it so much that we have to excessively nitpick about the finer details. I assume Zebo has some pretty thick skin by this point through his profession and after having dealt with the likes of Bite, PDan, myself and others over the years .

GAZEBOS DO NOT HAVE SKIN, WE HAVE SHINGLES, GOOD DAY SIR.

G

 

[civplayer33]

GAZEBOS DO NOT HAVE SKIN, WE HAVE SHINGLES, GOOD DAY SIR.

G

I certainly hope not -> Wikipedia - Shingles

On the second attempt I understood what was meant, though; what a wonderful language English is

 

[Guynemer]

GAZEBOS DO NOT HAVE SKIN, WE HAVE SHINGLES, GOOD DAY SIR.

G

There's a vaccine for that.

 

[civplayer33]

Naval Units weaker as garrisons, fixed quirk in code (per @ilteroi)

I'm not sure this has actually happened...stationing a Dromon in a 15 Def city increases the Def by 4 (to 19), while stationing a Composite Bowman or Spearman only increases it by 1 (to 16)...should I file a bug report or am I misunderstanding something here? I'm pretty sure that a couple of versions ago the increase in defensive strength through Land Unit garrisons was greater.

Edit: also, stationing a General in the city no longer increases defensive strength...is that intended?
Edit2: if I move a land unit into a city and then a naval unit, the defensive strength remains low, such that it is actually conducive to better defense to move the land unit out and let the naval unit stay, which is pretty weird.

 

[azum4roll]

Liberating City-States gives you a large Influence boost and all other civs' Influence are set to zero.

It's not large at all, especially in later eras. Can you make the amount scale with era?

 

[Recursive]

It's not large at all, especially in later eras. Can you make the amount scale with era?

I agree it could use an era scaling boost. I don't do balance changes, though, you'd have to ask G.

I'll make a post on Github for it, since it seems like a good idea.

 

[usadefcon1]

Spain, China, The Huns, and I share the same continent. I have 7 cities, a vassal Istanbul, the best military, and 3 CS allies. The Huns have 5 cites and newly acquired Beijing. Spain has 2 remaining cities, and China's last city is about to be taken by The Huns.

China doesn't want to be my vassal even though it will save them from The Huns, and Spain wants me to give her 2 Luxury Resources for a DP. Something isn't right here.

 

[Omen of Peace]

I'd argue it's fine that China doesn't agree with this vassalage. Imagine if you were the Huns and another civ vassalized the opponent you've demolished... it actually happened in past versions and felt terrible.

Thank you, Recursive! I wanted to bring that up but forgot.
I also need to report bugs on CS strength after liberation (with no unit and no defensive buidling, they are basically free lunch), and city HP after conquest (weird and impredictible)... when I get time.

 

[John.B.C]

No great works are ever traded. Has anyone seen a single great work up for trade?

 

[JamesNinelives]

Feedback from my current game: Resource balance is good! Policy balance is good (different AIs are doing well with a mix of different policies). Civ balance is pretty good too, overall (The Maya's UI is really strong?). Spy and city-state balance seems pretty good as well. I had concerns that spies were going to be too strong with them levelling up in city-states, but I actually had little trouble keeping a number of city-state alliances despite some strong pull from Statecraft Portugal.

Things that could be improved: the influence granted for building a landmark in city-state territory is current 50... which is rather small given the diplo bonus for building a landmark in an allies territory seems relatively big, and artifacts are an important source of tourism. The era bonus on Way of Transcendance didn't trigger for me on entering the Industrial Era or later. I can't figure out why it has for me on some games but not on others.

Mixed/Neutral: once I built a few agribusinesses they actually didn't seem too unbalanced. I didn't have any farms near by capital, but in this game I had a LOT of food (I built TwoKay, the Food Corporation), so farms really weren't what I wanted anyway. I'm still in favour of adjusting the yields to farms downwards slightly (even +2/+2 would be fine) so that I'm not incentivised to clear that jungle that I've spent all game protecting.

On that note I do feel that as corporations go TwoKay Foods (+10% food, +3 food per office) it's not as strong as say Trader Sid's (Gold) or Giorio Armeier (Culture) which I've built in the past. I think Corporations could maybe do with a balance review.

Spoiler Village :

Spoiler Nation :

 

[JamesNinelives]

No great works are ever traded. Has anyone seen a single great work up for trade?

If you put yours up for trade eventually someone will swap for it. I think it's just overtuned at the moment - I'm in the modern era and I've had a total of 3 swaps so far.