New Official Version - June 19th (6-19)

[ridjack]

I'll take a good look at peace logic as part of my rework - a bug may indeed be involved here. I think being able to endlessly prolong a war and cause unhappiness is a problem with the war weariness mechanic itself, however.

And naturally, almost immediately after I posted my cranky rant, Greece finally came to ask for peace. The spiral is back under control now.

Thanks for listening. Hopefully I'm just unlucky.

 

[Recursive]

I suspect the AI is able to psychically determine when another player's city is in danger, even without actually seeing it, and refuses to make peace as a result.

 

[ridjack]

Spoiler :

Is it normal to have an AI be 'Guarded' with me on first meeting? I haven't seen it before this that I can recall short of me having backstabbed or something along those lines.

 

[Recursive]

Spoiler :

Is it normal to have an AI be 'Guarded' with me on first meeting? I haven't seen it before this that I can recall short of me having backstabbed or something along those lines.

Nope, not intended. And fixed.

 

[vyyt]

And naturally, almost immediately after I posted my cranky rant, Greece finally came to ask for peace. The spiral is back under control now.

Thanks for listening. Hopefully I'm just unlucky.

Yup, I've seen Alexander here on the forum. I think he's seen your rant and decided to make peace

I understand the reasons for having war weariness and the anti-warmonger fervor mechanics, but I find them so unfun that I turn them off. The unhappiness from the newly conquered cities in resistance is usually enough for me to slow down an offensive war.

 

[CppMaster]

Nope, not intended. And fixed.

You are on fire, babe!

 

[Recursive]

You are on fire, babe!

I'm hoping to fix the completely broken vanilla logic for coop wars for next version as well, but it's making my head spin.

There's an exploit allowing the player to get themselves extra turns without war weariness, and there are several other bugs that need addressing, most notably warmongering penalties in coop wars not working properly and the AI being inconsistent in deploying military units when a war is declared.

 

[Recursive]

Yeah, the coop war fix will have to wait, I have other things to do right now.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Synopsis of the post I made in the general balance discussion for CS yields: religious city-states are very powerful at the moment.

Other observations: so are faith ruins. I've always been loathe to suggest nerfing ruins because I adore the Shoshone, but having played other civs a lot lately I do think maybe the faith ruins could be toned down a little. I don't even mean the ones that get you an early pantheon: that's fine. Getting a 1/6th of the faith needed to found a religion in one go is what feels unbalanced.

 

[tothePAIN]

Synopsis of the post I made in the general balance discussion for CS yields: religious city-states are very powerful at the moment.

Other observations: so are faith ruins. I've always been loathe to suggest nerfing ruins because I adore the Shoshone, but having played other civs a lot lately I do think maybe the faith ruins could be toned down a little. I don't even mean the ones that get you an early pantheon: that's fine. Getting a 1/6th of the faith needed to found a religion in one go is what feels unbalanced.

How often do faith ruins really happen though? I encounter natural wonders much more often.

 

[amateurgamer88]

What are people's thoughts about the current religion spreading? Since Inquisitors had their nerfs, I find that defending against enemy missionaries become extremely difficult, especially if two of your neighbors decide it's a good idea to spam missionaries against you. My cities are getting converted left and right while I just don't have faith to keep up with it. Maybe I'm alone with this?

 

[Revolutionist_8]

What are people's thoughts about the current religion spreading? Since Inquisitors had their nerfs, I find that defending against enemy missionaries become extremely difficult, especially if two of your neighbors decide it's a good idea to spam missionaries against you. My cities are getting converted left and right while I just don't have faith to keep up with it. Maybe I'm alone with this?

You can still park Inquisitors in your cities to prevent Missionary spam, or was this changed?

 

[CppMaster]

You can still park Inquisitors in your cities to prevent Missionary spam, or was this changed?

They prevent 50% of conversion power

 

[pineappledan]

What are people's thoughts about the current religion spreading? Since Inquisitors had their nerfs, I find that defending against enemy missionaries become extremely difficult, especially if two of your neighbors decide it's a good idea to spam missionaries against you. My cities are getting converted left and right while I just don't have faith to keep up with it. Maybe I'm alone with this?

I'm a big fan of the changes, personally.

You can still prevent spread with inquisitors, but they don't simply stonewall other religions like they used to. They also work against passive spread now, so Orthodoxy doesn't just ignore inquisitors anymore. Now you can still make a determined effort to convert someone, and now you pay more than just 200 for an inquisitor action; you pay in unhappiness and all yield outputs per turn. Now missionary actions can paralyze a foreign civ's economy, if they are determined to preserve their religion. This threat means we now have an actual basis for "wars of religion", because you can always just declare war and capture all their missionaries and force another civ to back off the old-fashioned way. It also means that pushing your religion on another civ, and the thousands of faith spent on doing that, might actually yield some returns, rather than a single inquisitor wiping out all your missionary spread investment.

There's a lot more decisions and interesting trade-offs to accepting/fighting a foreign religion's influence on your civ now.

 

[amateurgamer88]

You can still park Inquisitors in your cities to prevent Missionary spam, or was this changed?

Inquisitors slow down Missionary spam and that's assuming you have already enhanced. They also cost quite a bit of faith when a missionary can theoretically do more damage by using both charges.

I'm a big fan of the changes, personally.

You can still prevent spread with inquisitors, but they don't simply stonewall other religions like they used to. They also work against passive spread now, so Orthodoxy doesn't just ignore inquisitors anymore. Now you can still make a determined effort to convert someone, and now you pay more than just 200 for an inquisitor action; you pay in unhappiness and all yield outputs per turn. Now missionary actions can paralyze a foreign civ's economy, if they are determined to preserve their religion. This threat means we now have an actual basis for "wars of religion", because you can always just declare war and capture all their missionaries and force another civ to back off the old-fashioned way. It also means that pushing your religion on another civ, and the thousands of faith spent on doing that, might actually yield some returns, rather than a single inquisitor wiping out all your missionary spread investment.

There's a lot more decisions and interesting trade-offs to accepting/fighting a foreign religion's influence on your civ now.

I don't like the fact that there seem to be less counterplay against enemy missionaries, especially if you see two of your neighbors both spamming missionaries at you. Don't forget that you can experience this even before you enhanced your religion and fighting their missionaries means you never will enhance due to faith sunk into keeping your religion alive. In a way, we are making religious civs even more powerful by not only giving them the best odds of finding a religion but also benefiting by wiping out enemy religion altogether. There's a reason why some people see Spain as pretty broken and recent changes definitely emphasizes that.

We went from inquisitors being too powerful to missionaries being far more faith efficient overall. Why do I dislike this? It's already a competition to get the religion you want as there are set number of religious that can be found and finding late might not see you get whatever founder and follower you want. Are we making it so that you could just lose it after so much investment in the early game by going shrine first for the best pantheon? Why am I investing in a religion if I can just use war to conquer my neighbors and take their religion?

To be honest, I'm starting to warm up to passive spreading only compared to the current state where it's whoever has the most faith wins the conversion battles. The idea of using TR and buildings that give you more pressure seems pretty good compared to the current version. Of course, that might just be me.

 

[JamesNinelives]

How often do faith ruins really happen though? I encounter natural wonders much more often.

On large maps it's almost guaranteed to happen to someone.

I make a point of scouting as much as possible so it's not uncommon for me to encounter on, particular if I research Fishing before other civs on my continent. My main point was about balancing religious city-states, but there's already a seperate thread about that so I keep my observations here to a minimum .

@amateurgamer88 it's still an improvement on how inquisitors worked in the previous patch though. Yes, facing missionary spam is difficult especially from multiple civs. To be honest, in those situations I find it can better to build missionaries of your own rather than inquisitors. Maybe have a couple of inquisitors in key locations though.

 

[ridjack]

Are counterspies working, like... at all? I have constabularies in every city, and both of my spies in defense mode, and I'm still getting robbed left and right. Like, five successful spy actions against me in one turn. Not a single attempt has been stopped by my spies so far.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Are counterspies working, like... at all? I have constabularies in every city, and both of my spies in defense mode, and I'm still getting robbed left and right. Like, five successful spy actions against me in one turn. Not a single attempt has been stopped by my spies so far.

If I understand correctly, counterspies don't stop you from getting robbed so much as they kill enemy spies if they find them. The idea being that the AI will be hesitant to return after their agents have been killed (or at least it will give you a break for a while). What rank are your counterspies at?

 

[crdvis16]

I didn't know inquisitors now reduce passive spread, too. That's a nice compromise after their active ability was nerfed, especially for tall insular civs who have trouble competing with passive pressure.

Dealing with a pre-enhancement missionary attack might be a bit tougher. Requesting they stop sometimes works if you have good relations. DoW might be necessary otherwise, at least until you can enhance.

 

[ridjack]

So I've caught the Zulus spying on me twice now. We have a DoF. I asked them to stop the first time and they agreed; they did it again, and now my only choice is to get a backstabbing modifier or let it go. I know that there are some new modifiers in place for making promises and breaking them, so why is it the AI is allowed to do this and all the consequences fall on me? Doesn't quite feel fair.