New Beta Version - September 25th (9-25)

[Enginseer]

People just don't seem to remember that Gazebo is a person with a life (professor? I forgot) who has much RL work to do than to argue with the so-called "balance". Just because it looks OP on paper doesn't mean it's OP on practicality. Give his WIP a chance.

 

[ElliotS]

Designing a promotion cost around balancing an opportunity cost over an inherent property of the unit = bad, lazy design.

Read what you said. That's actually too dumb to comment on specifically.

The promotion is useful for chasing down a ship with a single ship. It won't do it's job at -1, but will at -3. ZoC will still be important. I think your arguments are horrendous and that fact that you're getting personal is really despicable. We all want to balance the game and make it as fun as possible for as many people as possible. That's why we're here using our free time to do this. If you feel the need to get personal it says more about you than the person you're attacking imo.

ElliotS x Gazebo is OTP confirmed

 

[ProCatGamer]

Erm the new promotion the G lighthouse gives only gives it to melee ships... is it meant to be only for melee ships (?)
(trying to avoid the war in this thread plz be merciful)

 

[Stalker0]

The promotion is useful for chasing down a ship with a single ship. It won't do it's job at -1, but will at -3. ZoC will still be important.

Took a lot of willpower to not comment on the rest of that quote, trying to get back to constructive debate.

Why wouldn't a -1 do the job you describe? Ranged Ships already have slower speeds than melee ships, so even without the promotion a melee ship can catch them. For melee ships, a -1 would mean that if the enemy ship normally has equal movement to you (which occurs in the majority of cases unless they have specific movement buffs you don't have) than you would still be able to catch up to them.

 

[Gazebo]

To head things off at the pass:

I've now finished integrating my intended 'plague' steps. There's now a promotion element that can make units to 'plagueIDs' of specific values. In the case of VP:

Boarding Party I - passes 'Boarded' promotion during combat (-1 moves)
Boarding Party II - immune to 'Boarded' status (can't catch me!)
Boarding Party III- passes Boarded II promotion (-2)

And, on the ranged ship side:

Indomitable: loses +25HP, but gains immune to 'Boarded' status

Also also, units with 'ignore ZOC' promotions are immune to the 'aura' movement penalty on Minelayer et.al. So you can't be slowed by any kind of AoE from units, just Boarded (unless you get Boarding Party II as well, at which point you're completely immune to SeaSea (get it?)

This is testing, this is not permanent or life-ending.

G

 

[Stalker0]

Boarding Party I - passes 'Boarded' promotion during combat (-1 moves)
Boarding Party II - immune to 'Boarded' status (can't catch me!)
Boarding Party III- passes Boarded II promotion (-2)

Indomitable: loses +25HP, but gains immune to 'Boarded' status

Is that still combined with a +15% CS at each step?

I feel like indomitable just adds even more of a "I have to manually check the promotions of every ship I engage with". If we are comfortable with these promotions, we need to let them work. If you want to protect your ranged ships from being boarded....you use melee ships, that's what they are there for.

 

[Gazebo]

Is that still combined with a +15% CS at each step?

I feel like indomitable just adds even more of a "I have to manually check the promotions of every ship I engage with". If we are comfortable with these promotions, we need to let them work. If you want to protect your ranged ships from being boarded....you use melee ships, that's what they are there for.

Yes, CS remains.

Indomitable is getting a different, more distinct icon. Ultimately it's a niche promotion. I don't think it will be an issue.

G

 

[pineappledan]

As you said, we'll see how it goes.

I like the historicity of putting resistance to boarding directly into the boarding line itself. European ships specially designed for boarding had "archer towers" on them, which made their upper decks more defendable. The added weight of building a tower on your top deck made these ships fairly slow, though.

As @Stalker0 has said, adding plague immunity adds another level of complexity to a somewhat opaque system. You will have to be careful you don't waste attacks against a unit that can ignore your promotions. This is hard, because scanning enemy promotions with the base UI is pretty difficult, and requires you to have memorized the icons (you don't have access to the text of enemy promotions).

If promotion icons are made very distinct (unique colours, maybe purple or something?) that would help mitigate the problem. Ultimately, it will slow down combat, as players peruse promotions so they don't make a costly mistake. The other issue is that such a change will not be noob-friendly. Civ has never required such detailed counterplay

 

[chicorbeef]

Is that still combined with a +15% CS at each step?

I feel like indomitable just adds even more of a "I have to manually check the promotions of every ship I engage with". If we are comfortable with these promotions, we need to let them work. If you want to protect your ranged ships from being boarded....you use melee ships, that's what they are there for.

Yeah, it sounds like a lot of micro to check every ranged ship before knowing whether it would affect them or not.

For Minelayer, why don't we just keep things simple and make the promotion "Enemy adjacent naval units take 10 damage per turn" or something, I can't say I'm a big fan of overlapping bonuses with Boarding Party.

My issue is that shutting down naval movement for the AI completely without them able to retaliate will be abusable. At -1 and later -2 it should be fine but stacking Minelayer would put it over the top.

I like base Boarding Party, will see how it goes. Curious though, didn't you reject Blue Water because you didn't like movement in a base promotion line because you thought it was abusable How does taking the AI's movement qualify then?

 

[pineappledan]

For Minelayer, why don't we just keep things simple and make the promotion "Enemy adjacent naval units take 15 damage per turn" or something, I can't say I'm a big fan of overlapping bonuses with Boarding Party.

Or -30 to all adjacent units, and -1 attack.

So it's a dedicated moving citadel, but it can't directly fire on other ships. Move it to the dreadnought line in that case, so the debuff placer isn't wasted

 

[matlajs]

So we are again in a same case like before about volunteer vassals? My first game with this version and Iroquis have 2 volunteers? Already for 50+ turns and that only i know of. They are first almost in everything except army. Do once more those vassalized nations not care about their own win? Is it again 1 vs 11? AI behaviour in WC voting again suspicious, vote against harmless player proposal(natural herritages), while totaly ignore their own, which would help them a lot more, to addition that that particular nation also has a global commandments reformation? Sorry that this question may sounds aggresive, but why we are again and again turning arround a problems we considered unwanted?

 

[matlajs]

And to adition- it would be great if there can be a new city manager option- something which would choose the best placing for fighting unhappiness. auto city manager does not do that.

 

[nekokon]

TAnd, on the ranged ship side:

Indomitable: loses +25HP, but gains immune to 'Boarded' status

I think this promotion won't be of much use, since ranged ship would either get 1-shot or near dead if they got caught anyway. With lower movement they''re already unable to escape from melee ship.

Regarding the issue with similar looking promotions, how about we simply change the color of the promotion icon to signify their uses ?
Red icon = offensive promotion (dmg,splash)
Blue icon = defensive (+hp, cs while defending)
Green = supportive (medic, march, dmg buff/debuff aura)
Yellow = movement, vision and range (including movement debuff and ignoring ZoC here)
Black = harmful promotion (being debuffed, or inherited weakness like -cs attacking city)

Or simplified version:
Yellow icon = direct combat related (all cs and extra attack promotions except dedicated debuffs)
White icon = all utilities (debuffs/movement/range/aura... everything else)
Black icon = harmful promotion.

A bit of guess work if you're unfamiliar with the promotion tree, but still a lot faster than checking all the descriptions.

The change to make ML do dmg to all enemies nearby would be too powerful, since the dmg applied before enemy's turn. It's even stronger than having a citadel throw onto your face since citadel only inflicts dmg if you end your turn next to it. Alpha strike > put ML in the middle of low hp fleet > everything's dead before they can do anything, no counter whatsoever.
I'm still op for putting ML into tank line. It synchronizes so well together.

 

[bigcat88]

On this version I played the most impressive game(still in progress).
Great thanks to developers!

 

[BiteInTheMark]

The steps for extra happiness from luxuries by populations are insane.
I managed to get 178 population to increase the effect of luxuries, but for the next step, I have to get 764!

How do you achieve and increase of +329%?
Couldnt the steps between the luxuries be much smaller? Like +25% or something?
The effect and the curve could stay the same, but at the moment, between those points of populations are eras. Iam maybe able to reach 300 pop in the endgame and could trigger 2 times more a +25% increase in pop, but its impossible to get those 764 population.
To hit this line, you need to have 25 30-citizen-cities. This should be very unlikly in the most stardard size game, unless your pure warmonger.
Could we make the steps more smoother?

So we are again in a same case like before about volunteer vassals? My first game with this version and Iroquis have 2 volunteers? Already for 50+ turns and that only i know of. They are first almost in everything except army. Do once more those vassalized nations not care about their own win? Is it again 1 vs 11? AI behaviour in WC voting again suspicious, vote against harmless player proposal(natural herritages), while totaly ignore their own, which would help them a lot more, to addition that that particular nation also has a global commandments reformation? Sorry that this question may sounds aggresive, but why we are again and again turning arround a problems we considered unwanted?

I see something similar. I have ottomans and germany in my game and not one of them proposed treasure fleet in world congress, while their UA/UB is based on traderoutes... especially for those nations, this proposal should be one of the first things which are suggested.

 

[Gazebo]

As you said, we'll see how it goes.

I like the historicity of putting resistance to boarding directly into the boarding line itself. European ships specially designed for boarding had "archer towers" on them, which made their upper decks more defendable. The added weight of building a tower on your top deck made these ships fairly slow, though.

As @Stalker0 has said, adding plague immunity adds another level of complexity to a somewhat opaque system. You will have to be careful you don't waste attacks against a unit that can ignore your promotions. This is hard, because scanning enemy promotions with the base UI is pretty difficult, and requires you to have memorized the icons (you don't have access to the text of enemy promotions).

If promotion icons are made very distinct (unique colours, maybe purple or something?) that would help mitigate the problem. Ultimately, it will slow down combat, as players peruse promotions so they don't make a costly mistake. The other issue is that such a change will not be noob-friendly. Civ has never required such detailed counterplay

I haven’t started UI work yet. Stay tuned.

G

 

[Aristos]

To head things off at the pass:

I've now finished integrating my intended 'plague' steps. There's now a promotion element that can make units to 'plagueIDs' of specific values. In the case of VP:

Boarding Party I - passes 'Boarded' promotion during combat (-1 moves)
Boarding Party II - immune to 'Boarded' status (can't catch me!)
Boarding Party III- passes Boarded II promotion (-2)

And, on the ranged ship side:

Indomitable: loses +25HP, but gains immune to 'Boarded' status

Also also, units with 'ignore ZOC' promotions are immune to the 'aura' movement penalty on Minelayer et.al. So you can't be slowed by any kind of AoE from units, just Boarded (unless you get Boarding Party II as well, at which point you're completely immune to SeaSea (get it?)

This is testing, this is not permanent or life-ending.

G

For a split second you scared me... I got waves of memories from Civilization: Fallen Enchantress' religious combat. Careful with those promotion names and ids/qualifiers, please...

 

[FoxOfWar]

At this point I'll just add that I am curious about potential developments, but don't have a strong opinion one way or another.

Anything that helps me combat unhappiness by way of giving more time to react and/or more information to work from is good.

Promotions-wise one just ends up playing with very few on Marathon anyway (excepting going total warmonger for the whole game; playing Sweden, Zulu or Assyria, or your starting scout should it survive) so I'm fine with playing around with any set of them.

 

[Owlbebach]

Boarding Party I - passes 'Boarded' promotion during combat (-1 moves)
Boarding Party II - immune to 'Boarded' status (can't catch me!)
Boarding Party III- passes Boarded II promotion (-2)

I just can't resist saying that i proposed a very similar thing long time ago, when ranged ships were made 1 range instead of 2

 

[andersw]

(I know this change is from 6th but I'll post here since its the same beta branch.)

"Inquisition: Inquisitors cost 25% less Faith, and generate 300 Gold when they successfully change a City's Religious Majority by Removing Heresy. Bonus value declines every Era. Your spies exert +50 Religious Pressure on the Cities they occupy (Standard Speed), and +2 Happiness if stationed in a foreign City."

I noticed that the gold generation scaled with speed as I got 450 g in epic speed.

Atm it's awesome for a medieval war fuelling with conversion of conquered cities.
However with later era wars, which will happen on higher difficulty, means you get less gold when most other things scale up, including upgrade AND inquisitor cost ....

Whats the idea regarding the "Bonus value decline every Era" ?