New Official Version - December 1st (12-1)

[Revolutionist_8]

To celebrate the return of G , I placed a holy site so holy that even a cloud appeared above it

(yes, I put it there solely for this reason)

 

[2506]

I'm usually happy to found in an alternate city with a religious natural wonder. These are also the only times I've ever experienced a prophet spawning outside my capital. The flavor feels like Mecca and Medina or Kyoto and Edo or something. Plus, it's usually a relief to know I can build my religious wonders there rather than add another thing in the queue of my capital.

I agree. It also happens at other times for me. I'm not certain, but it may be when I find a religious ruin closer to the city than to the capital, or when I have a trade route to a religious city from that city.

May you elaborate why is it "interesting"? It feels like a clear disadvantage the vast majority of times.

In my case, because "interesting" and "disadvantageous" aren't mutually exclusive.

 

[Recursive]

Additional fixes from me for next version (also added to previous changelog):

Diplomacy
- Additional finetuning of aggression
- Improvements to city liberation logic

AI Autoplay
- Fixed AI acting hostile to observers in the leaderhead screen for no reason
- Observer can now make share opinion requests of the AI to get their true approach towards other players, for debugging
- Enabled additional notifications for observers: war, peace, vassalage, Wonder construction

Diplo Debug Mode
- Diplo debug mode now actually shows the AI's true approach (instead of "1"; blame Firaxis's localization); thanks to psparky for helping me figure this out!
- When enabled, player now has Intimate knowledge of all AI civs' World Congress desires, regardless of ideology/diplomats

Bugfixes
- Fixed Roman Forum and Summer Palace not having a MaxStartEra
- Humans now have Intimate knowledge of AI teammates' World Congress desires, regardless of ideology/diplomats
- Fixed bugs with previous changes

I would post a beta as my changes are stable and ready for testing, but there seem to be some issues with AI behavior and the city governor from @ilteroi's changes - so I'll await any fixes from him on that, but it's coming soon.

 

[Recursive]

Annnnnd drumroll

I'm testing another change right now, but I think a lot of you will like it!

Diplomacy
- Players can now denounce each other while at war
  AI taught to do this too
  Disabled if "Permanent War" or "Permanent War or Peace" are enabled
  Rationale: Players don't need the agreement of the other leader to badmouth them

- Share Opinion now works even if at war, but AI will only share their opinion if debug mode is enabled or if they're at war with the player you ask about
  Now you can always hear the leader's lovely voice say something other than "You're joking, right?" or "My armies cannot be stopped." :)
  This is mostly intended as a debugging feature for modders/players though!

Bugfixes
- Fixed observer interaction with leaderhead screen (can no longer demand, denounce, etc)
- AIs now show up as "NEUTRAL" towards observers, not "Emotionless"
- Fixed a bug with the button to request that the AI move their troops

Cleanup
- Removed "MOD_DIPLOMACY_AUTO_DENOUNCE" option as this change makes it obsolete

 

[ChefBRD]

@ChefBRD , I may be imagining things, but I feel that the choice of city tile manager (governor) affects which tiles will be targeted next by the border growth algorithm. I normally lock tiles that I wish to have worked and then set the governor to "Production". The border growth algo then seems to go preferentially after hills and plains instead of grasslands, but again, I could be imagining things

Hrm. I just experimented with this in my current game, and with Production focus, my cities are still preferring floodplains to horses and riverside grasslands to multiple sources of hillside copper. If modders want to weigh in on whether this unintentional, I'm happy to big report and share saves on GitHub.

 

[JamesNinelives]

- Players can now denounce each other while at war

Oh! I like this .

 

[Zuizgond]

First off, many many thanks for all the effort for those involved in the production of VP, past, present and future. You have breathed life into the game in a manner which Firaxis should take note and start paying a wage for.

In the latest version of VP (Which is truly amazing after updating from a version dating back a few years) I have been consistently out-performing the AI in regards to settlement expansion, often having the advantage of 4 or more cities by the time half of the AI civs have settled their second without really focusing on settler production.

I have noticed for some civs the AI has a tendency to push to 6 population in their capital before they push a settler for their second city, even for expansionist civs.

In trying to alleviate this to have a little more emphasis in the early expansion, the only variables I have found that seem to be noteworthy for alteration (My knowledge of lua/sql is quite poor these days, basic at best unless I sit down for longer periods of time to recap) appear to be as follows:

Located in Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\(1) Community Patch\Core Files\Core Changes\CoreChanges.xml

<AICityStrategy_Flavors>
<Row>
<AICityStrategyType>AICITYSTRATEGY_LARGE_CITY</AICityStrategyType>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_EXPANSION</FlavorType>
<Flavor>30</Flavor>
</Row>
<Row>
<AICityStrategyType>AICITYSTRATEGY_ENOUGH_TILE_IMPROVERS</AICityStrategyType>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_EXPANSION</FlavorType>
<Flavor>40</Flavor>
</Row>
<Row>
<AICityStrategyType>AICITYSTRATEGY_CAPITAL_NEED_SETTLER</AICityStrategyType>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_OFFENSE</FlavorType>
<Flavor>100</Flavor>
</Row>
</AICityStrategy_Flavors>

Out of curiosity, what is defining of a 'large city' and is the need_settler variable supposed to be flavour_offense instead of expansion?

Are there any other variables that I need to be aware of to fine-tune without upsetting later than early gameplay?

Editing these variables have not produced any meaningful results to date, though I still need to do a lot more testing...

Note in edit: Sorry for size of post, not sure how to insert a code snippet on these forums.

I, too, really think AI is expanding too slow. I do not know if it is due to the inefficiency of creating too many cities (reduced research/tourism/culture) or lack of happiness or settlers being too low in the production priority or AI choosing Tradition a lot but I am looking to play with some variables to change that. Too bad your changes didn't lead to meaningful results in that regards.

I like civ games to be an expansion race like in Civ4 and I am still trying to find which variables to change in order to address this.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

I also think that the AI settles their cities a bit too close to their already existing ones. Maybe it is me that is too greedy and settle cities quite far apart, but I almost never see them aggressively settle good real estate early on.

 

[doublex55]

I, too, really think AI is expanding too slow. I do not know if it is due to the inefficiency of creating too many cities (reduced research/tourism/culture) or lack of happiness or settlers being too low in the production priority or AI choosing Tradition a lot but I am looking to play with some variables to change that. Too bad your changes didn't lead to meaningful results in that regards.

I like civ games to be an expansion race like in Civ4 and I am still trying to find which variables to change in order to address this.

Expansion is so so slow its weird

 

[Stalker0]

So after several games of trying out island expansion, I may conclude that its still not defendible enough to be worth it.

Spoiler :

Now if it was just me and Portugal, I could hold this. I have the navy. The issue is the dog pile. Denmark has a huge navy in both north and south. Japan also had a sizable navy in the north (thankfully we just peaced out).

So my navy is already spread thin, I am doing well....but I simply can't hold 3 navies with 1 navy. So my islands are forced to fend for themselves. Maybe I could try forts on all my island spots, because g guns by themselves are too vulnerable to the navy on an island, and they get sniped quickly as is what happened here. Then its simply a matter of time.

The tricky thing is...again I think the island is holdable if I can get ships there, but I have absolutely not a single ship to spare.


This has happened consistently in enough games, that I may just have to declare islands untenable....which is a real shame. Anyone figured a good strategic solution to the problem?

 

[doublex55]

I mean what i see here is that u cant go for all the islands which is reasonable, if you just went for 1 or 2 you would be fine.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Yeah the biggest problem with naval combat compared to land combat when people are ganging up on you is that terrain isn't a factor in the same way. You can hold by the Thermopyle-effect on land kinda because movement is so limited, but that isnt the case for naval combat. Not saying it should be, it just is more about raw numbers than on land.

 

[Stalker0]

I mean what i see here is that u cant go for all the islands which is reasonable, if you just went for 1 or 2 you would be fine.

Those are my only 2 islands that I settled. The one to the lower left is a puppet I took in my war with Denmark, its just a healing area for my ships.

 

[2506]

This has happened consistently in enough games, that I may just have to declare islands untenable....which is a real shame. Anyone figured a good strategic solution to the problem?

Why should a small island be strongly defensible in a world war?

 

[Kim Dong Un]

So after several games of trying out island expansion, I may conclude that its still not defendible enough to be worth it.

Spoiler :

View attachment 580578

Now if it was just me and Portugal, I could hold this. I have the navy. The issue is the dog pile. Denmark has a huge navy in both north and south. Japan also had a sizable navy in the north (thankfully we just peaced out).

So my navy is already spread thin, I am doing well....but I simply can't hold 3 navies with 1 navy. So my islands are forced to fend for themselves. Maybe I could try forts on all my island spots, because g guns by themselves are too vulnerable to the navy on an island, and they get sniped quickly as is what happened here. Then its simply a matter of time.

The tricky thing is...again I think the island is holdable if I can get ships there, but I have absolutely not a single ship to spare.


This has happened consistently in enough games, that I may just have to declare islands untenable....which is a real shame. Anyone figured a good strategic solution to the problem?

On lower difficulties you'd get away with it, but I know you usually play at Emperor+ so that's the main issue.

I think you just executed poorly by misreading and trying to force the situation; although you didn't technically overexpand, there's no real justification to settle so close to Portugal (a naval flavoured civ) considering your positioning between Japan and Denmark should've left you anticipating being spread thin due to inevitable conflict with your direct neighbors. You probably should've just disregarded that area and instead turtle for Denmark while focusing on vassalizing Oda.

 

[youngsteve]

So after several games of trying out island expansion, I may conclude that its still not defendible enough to be worth it.


Now if it was just me and Portugal, I could hold this. I have the navy. The issue is the dog pile. Denmark has a huge navy in both north and south. Japan also had a sizable navy in the north (thankfully we just peaced out).

So my navy is already spread thin, I am doing well....but I simply can't hold 3 navies with 1 navy. So my islands are forced to fend for themselves. Maybe I could try forts on all my island spots, because g guns by themselves are too vulnerable to the navy on an island, and they get sniped quickly as is what happened here. Then its simply a matter of time.

The tricky thing is...again I think the island is holdable if I can get ships there, but I have absolutely not a single ship to spare.


This has happened consistently in enough games, that I may just have to declare islands untenable....which is a real shame. Anyone figured a good strategic solution to the problem?

I have also found island games heavy going. The civs like their navies & you can soon find they use them well. If ever I see Carthage is any game where ships come into play, I know sooner rather than later I will have to deal with their massive armada.

 

[Stalker0]

I think you just executed poorly by misreading and trying to force the situation; although you didn't technically overexpand, there's no real justification to settle so close to Portugal (a naval flavoured civ) considering your positioning between Japan and Denmark should've left you anticipating being spread thin due to inevitable conflict with your direct neighbors. You probably should've just disregarded that area and instead turtle for Denmark while focusing on vassalizing Oda.

Your likely right. These were the only real good islands on the map (with 4 oil, and I'm playing low strategic so that's actually a lot of oil). So I took the plunge, but your likely right that this close to an enemy force is simply not tenable.

Update on the fight:

Spoiler :

So the vikings peaced out unexpectedly (as did Japan), giving me a chance to defend my island. Its been a brutal fight, and though I gave way more than I got, the reality of naval combat is that I lost a lot of ships.

Then the vikings attacked again. It was a brilliant plan (probably not intentional but I'm giving it to the AI). The vikings have brought a fresh navy, where my navy is battered and bruised. They instantly killed 4 of my ships, and now I'm getting squeezed on both sides. I have abandoned the position but if portual heads west after they are done I'm probably going to lose my entire southern navy.

At this point I am recalling all ships I can to my mainland. I am abandoning all colonies and going for a total mainland defense. I have the tech advantage so I still have a good chance at the game, so here we go!

 

[Stalker0]

Why should a small island be strongly defensible in a world war?

I agree, I'm not really looking to make the island stronger per say...honestly I'm not even really sure what to do about this....I'm just commenting on the fact that island colonies seem extremely questionable at the moment because of the sheer effort to defend them.

 

[2506]

I agree, I'm not really looking to make the island stronger per say...honestly I'm not even really sure what to do about this....I'm just commenting on the fact that island colonies seem extremely questionable at the moment because of the sheer effort to defend them.

I know we have a consensus on these islands being hard to hold at higher levels. Communitu does make them tempting. I occasionally succumb and take my chances. You gain its benefits for x amount of time. And then, when you're confronted the way you were... time to bail out!

 

[ChefBRD]

I fall into the island expansion trap far too often. I think one small change that could improve viability is if island puppet governors prioritized defensive buildings higher. I haven't captured islands in this version yet, but in past versions I've always been very irritated with how lax island governors are about defense.

As it stands the ROI on the massive investment to field a navy capable of island defense is too low in part because using that navy to capture and puppet mid-tier island cities only compounds your problems by opening up more sea to defend. And they're not worth the headache because they'll be immediately wiped as soon as you (a) lose your navy defending your good stuff or (b) don't defend them adequately.

Adding just a little toughness to puppets (by prioritizing defense and/or adding a slight naval CS buff to cities with, say, a military base) might enable a strategy where you paint the sea <insert color here> and use these expendable puppets to slow down and hamper the AI's assault.

Another thought is adding specialized promotions for ranged units that increase combat strength vs naval units (and maybe air promotions as well that give a big naval boost but not for land).

Also, brainstorming, add a slight movement penalty on blue water to decrease maneuverability of human and AI attacking fleets.