New Hotfix Version (12-15)

[notque]

Trade routes were too strong. It's better that they are lower. This lowers them. Internal shouldn't be effected, that's a bug.

I am sending trade routes farther away, and having to think about who i'm at war with, and what direction they should go. I like that.

 

[Asterix Rage]

There is no setting for it, as it is an experiment.

Speaking experiment :

 

[bigcat88]

Thanks for 'BALANCE_CORE_SCALING_TRADE_DISTANCE'. Will set it to zero, till fix for internal trade routes.

And how corporations now will affect trade routes?(that two corporations that increases range value and those which increases movespeed(moves twice as fast))

 

[Mitch.sp]

Thanks for 'BALANCE_CORE_SCALING_TRADE_DISTANCE'. Will set it to zero, till fix for internal trade routes.

And how corporations now will affect trade routes?(that two corporations that increases range value and those which increases movespeed(moves twice as fast))

You can take a look here

 

[CrabHelmet]

I... can't beat Deity any more. The new difficulty is too much for me.

 

[Txurce]

I... can't beat Deity any more. The new difficulty is too much for me.

You aren't the frst Deity player to post about how much tougher it is. Playing at E/I level, I basically can't tell the difference between the old and the new, except that the lack of runaways seems to make the game easier. Do you have any idea what aspect of Deity would have become supercharged in a way that wouldn't necessarily register at lower levels?

 

[CrabHelmet]

The AI are just ferocious the entire game long. I wouldn't say there are any runaways, they're all level with each other, it's just... that level is well above me. I struggle to get religions, and my teching is way behind theirs. At best I can cling on until Renaissance, but after that... yikes.

 

[Txurce]

The AI are just ferocious the entire game long. I wouldn't say there are any runaways, they're all level with each other, it's just... that level is well above me. I struggle to get religions, and my teching is way behind theirs. At best I can cling on until Renaissance, but after that... yikes.

Wow. It is nothing like that on lower levels.

 

[tu_79]

The AI are just ferocious the entire game long. I wouldn't say there are any runaways, they're all level with each other, it's just... that level is well above me. I struggle to get religions, and my teching is way behind theirs. At best I can cling on until Renaissance, but after that... yikes.

You have to lower iHandicapA. A lot. And iHandicapB. A bit.

 

[notque]

I am playing with the handicap levels, I tried 200/200/200 and had a nice game on King, where I usually play Emperor.

Part of the problem is deciding which difficulty level I'm trying to match for.

 

[Txurce]

I am playing with the handicap levels, I tried 200/200/200 and had a nice game on King, where I usually play Emperor.

Part of the problem is deciding which difficulty level I'm trying to match for.

What part of the game got tougher for you?

 

[IcyAngel]

Dear Gazebo, an observation: the free Frigate from Treasure Fleet isn't granted the exp of the city it spawns in.

 

[Owlbebach]

You aren't the frst Deity player to post about how much tougher it is. Playing at E/I level, I basically can't tell the difference between the old and the new, except that the lack of runaways seems to make the game easier. Do you have any idea what aspect of Deity would have become supercharged in a way that wouldn't necessarily register at lower levels?

Did you try to play to the end? In my Siam game i was 3rd out of 10 in tech in Renaissance, but ended up being 8th out of 9 players. And i was 10 policies behind leader. Industrial/Modern is where new bonuses start to work

 

[tu_79]

I am playing with the handicap levels, I tried 200/200/200 and had a nice game on King, where I usually play Emperor.

Part of the problem is deciding which difficulty level I'm trying to match for.

200 is too much for iHandicapA, in my opinion. Go for something between 30 and 60.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Nope. I promised @Gazebo I'd do a Morocco game on Deity, but I'm getting my ass handed to me. Going to have to step back to Immortal.

If you get super-peaceful neighbours who'll leave you alone and let you focus entirely on infrastructure, you can maaaybe keep pace up to Renaissance. After that? Nope.

 

[Infixo]

I am playing on Emperor, with initial handicap values. I’ve just entered REN. I was behind early, partially due to isolated start, like 10 techs to leader. Catching up since Medieval, I am 4 behind now.
My observation is that AIs are stronger with Culture and policies. I am building all possible Culture buildings, more than science ones. And the leader has 4 more policies and that doesn’t seem to shrink. Other AIs also seem much stronger with policies than techs.
I am Japan, progress and 5 in fealty, have 13 cities.
Leader is Egypt, tradition and artistry, and 2 from industry, with 9 cities.
Tl;dr are handicap bonuses like more culture oriented?

 

[CrazyG]

That isn't the first report of Egypt snowballing to an extreme extent. An AI bonus was added to archeology, are we sure it isn't firing accidentally when Egypt builds the burial tomb?

 

[ElliotS]

I think AIs get too much bonus culture. I think their handicap culture should be half of everything else. (Or maybe a number pushed to the xml so we can test it like ABC.) Even with Handicap values that feel correct for everything else AIs will speed ahead in culture.

 

[Mad Madigan]

As a general observation of AI performance, I'm actually noticing some underperformance from the AI, especially on difficulties below Immortal/Deity. I used to play King but upgraded to Emperor earlier this year, and tried Immortal a few times to see how the jump in difficulty felt. Then, with the first AI handicap adjustment I found that the boost in their performance knocked me back down to playing at King again (in the 12-6 patch). But now with the 12-13/12-15 patch I'm seeing really, really poor AI performance at King and upped the difficulty back to Emperor. It's really hard to get an objective read on this, but my subjective feeling is that in the 12-15 patch the AI at Emperor at the beginning of the game (pre-Ren) is noticeably weaker than the old handicapped AI at King. But then once a few eras have passed the AI really starts to pick up steam, a phenomenon I never really experienced with the old handicap model. But from what I'm hearing from the Deity players, with the current patch the early-game AI handicap is still really strong, and then gets stronger and stronger as the game progresses.

However, as it stands right now, even at Emperor the starting "power" of the AI Civs feels very weak. I'm so used to having to work hard early in the game to get as much of an early advantage, and now that feels even easier to achieve. The difference is that in previous patches once you got in the lead you pretty much never lost it as the AI got less and less effective as the game went on, but currently the AI feels like it can start to make a comeback in the later Eras is you don't constantly work to kneecap your strongest AI opponents. That's a really good thing, in my opinion, and I feel with a little more tweaking this new handicap curve could solve the issue of the game feeling like a forgone conclusion once you reach the Ren/Industrial Eras. From the perspective of a King/Emperor player, I feel the AI is still a little too weak in the Ancient-Medieval Eras. I'm not a mathematician, but if the current handicap curve could be adjusted to give them slightly more yields early on while not boosting them anymore than they currently get in the Ren+ Eras I think it would be perfect.

EDIT: I just wanted to clarify that I meant the early game AI bonuses need upward adjustment for difficulty levels below Immortal. Every tick down in difficulty level seems to have a huge effect on early game AI performance. In the 12-15 patch the early-game difference between King and Emperor feels huge. Maybe that's by design, but I feel like maybe the AI sees too much of a drop in early game power for each tick down the difficulty scale from Immortal to Emperor to King to Prince, etc.

 

[Infixo]

I think AIs get too much bonus culture. I think their handicap culture should be half of everything else. (Or maybe a number pushed to the xml so we can test it like ABC.) Even with Handicap values that feel correct for everything else AIs will speed ahead in culture.

I believe that tech tree consumes more science that policies consume culture, like to get to more or less the same point in time. Idk exactly what is the proportion here, but bonuses should be in the same proportion. Otherwise, more culture is pushed into AIs relatively to science, and they get much stronger in that area.