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

[Tekamthi]

I started three games on this patch Epic speed Emperor difficulty and there is something really odd but i cannot put my hands on it, the game feels significantly difficult for a reason or another ... Civs start to runaway in techs & policies much earlier, there is an incredible happiness problem in late medieval/ early renaissance that even as a progress civ with 7 or 8 cities i cannot stay above 50% bappiness for whatever reason.

they've all become too civil and kind... everyone's been requesting diplo logic that matches the way we as humans rationalize things today, so recursive has used his genius to build us some near-utopia civ and it drives us all crazy, just like in the matrix

kidding aside, i love all the changes but agree it needs to be baked a tiny bit longer... i think AI too often rules out war as an option to keep their neighbour in check

 

[CppMaster]

I started three games on this patch Epic speed Emperor difficulty and there is something really odd but i cannot put my hands on it, the game feels significantly difficult for a reason or another ... Civs start to runaway in techs & policies much earlier, there is an incredible happiness problem in late medieval/ early renaissance that even as a progress civ with 7 or 8 cities i cannot stay above 50% bappiness for whatever reason.

Maybe Epic speed is the culprit here. I play on Standard with Songhai, have about 12 cities after conquest, went Authority, Fealty without founding a religion and my happiness oscillates between 40-60%

 

[Recursive]

I started three games on this patch Epic speed Emperor difficulty and there is something really odd but i cannot put my hands on it, the game feels significantly difficult for a reason or another ... Civs start to runaway in techs & policies much earlier, there is an incredible happiness problem in late medieval/ early renaissance that even as a progress civ with 7 or 8 cities i cannot stay above 50% bappiness for whatever reason.

they've all become too civil and kind... everyone's been requesting diplo logic that matches the way we as humans rationalize things today, so recursive has used his genius to build us some near-utopia civ and it drives us all crazy, just like in the matrix

kidding aside, i love all the changes but agree it needs to be baked a tiny bit longer... i think AI too often rules out war as an option to keep their neighbour in check

Maybe Epic speed is the culprit here. I play on Standard with Songhai, have about 12 cities after conquest, went Authority, Fealty without founding a religion and my happiness oscillates between 40-60%

Difficulty bonuses now scale with game speed. 1.5x for Epic.

Haha. AI aggression should be more pronounced and strategic in the next version, although it needs playtesting.

I also fixed a bug which was blocking 3rd party war declarations if the AI is already at war, so you should see more of that.

 

[tu_79]

@Recursive, I think you should stop teasing us with the next version. It prevents us from playing the current one!

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I started three games on this patch Epic speed Emperor difficulty and there is something really odd but i cannot put my hands on it, the game feels significantly difficult for a reason or another ... Civs start to runaway in techs & policies much earlier, there is an incredible happiness problem in late medieval/ early renaissance that even as a progress civ with 7 or 8 cities i cannot stay above 50% bappiness for whatever reason.

Started another game on the same settings as the celts, went progress >> fealty >>rationalism yet for pretty much the entire game i was below 50% happiness despite building every single bit of infrastructure, having a copy of almost all of the of the available luxuries including Indonesia's uniques, doing 3 public work projects and maintaining a good relationship with most of the other civs .... I did not do any conquering or have any sort of war weariness yet i entered the industrial era with no city reaching 20 pop including the capital which was also unhappy.
Is anyone having this kind of problem on this version?
Edit: forgot to mention that i found a religion with the follower beliefs Mosques and Synagogues specifically to combat unhappiness and had both of them in every single city since medieval era.

 

[azum4roll]

Started another game on the same settings as the celts, went progress >> fealty >>rationalism yet for pretty much the entire game i was below 50% happiness despite building every single bit of infrastructure, having a copy of almost all of the of the available luxuries including Indonesia's uniques, doing 3 public work projects and maintaining a good relationship with most of the other civs .... I did not do any conquering or have any sort of war weariness yet i entered the industrial era with no city reaching 20 pop including the capital which was also unhappy.
Is anyone having this kind of problem on this version?
Edit: forgot to mention that i found a religion with the follower beliefs Mosques and Synagogues specifically to combat unhappiness and had both of them in every single city since medieval era.

How many cities do you have?

 

[Recursive]

@Recursive, I think you should stop teasing us with the next version. It prevents us from playing the current one!

I mean, if you insist, I can post my changelogs AFTER a version is released...

I get the feeling most people like to know when progress has been made and what's coming, though.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Backstabbers receive no positive bonuses from any of this

Maybe it's because I'm playing games with lots of civs (12) so there's often a 'bigger fish' but to be honest I find the AI hates backstabbers already. In my current game Assyria did well for once, but backstabbed someone and started to crumble as multiple civs denounced them. Leading to the rest of the world to denounce them, and them the braver ones declare war. Which is great of course! It's not like they had captured a lot of citites or anything though, and fighting multiple opponents they lost more and more ground over time. Eventually they were right near the bottom of rankings. But their relations with other people don't seem to have improved? People keep wanting to take more of their land. I guess this makes sense as they are unpopular and not very strong any more. Feels a bit like the penalty for backstabbing should wear off eventually of not affect so many things though. Compared to for example civs that are a current threat/have taken other civ's cities. In the same game, Greece also backstabbed someone but wasn't able to capitalize on it so they more of less did poorly for the rest of the game.

That said, diplo in other areas is good. I make a mistake early on my accepting a friendship with Greece which people disliked, but over time realised it was better to just have general positive relations with them and make friends with other players instead. I managed to convince many of my friends to denounce the two leaders - Siam and Brazil, and am hoping to catch them up over time. Or at least beat China who is still currently in third place!

Freedom of Information (Civ)", which would automatically bring everyone else up to their tech level

Have you tried playing with tech trading? I've found it extremely useful in empowering my allies and am actually able to buy techs from them as well sometimes - so helps both of us. I even have civs gift me tech sometimes .

 

[DeAnno]

Have you tried playing with tech trading? I've found it extremely useful in empowering my allies and am actually able to buy techs from them as well sometimes - so helps both of us. I even have civs gift me tech sometimes .

I agree tech trading is very good for the game. It makes Sanctions bite a lot harder too. Maybe I should start turning both that and Research Agreements on together...

 

[CppMaster]

Started another game on the same settings as the celts, went progress >> fealty >>rationalism yet for pretty much the entire game i was below 50% happiness despite building every single bit of infrastructure, having a copy of almost all of the of the available luxuries including Indonesia's uniques, doing 3 public work projects and maintaining a good relationship with most of the other civs .... I did not do any conquering or have any sort of war weariness yet i entered the industrial era with no city reaching 20 pop including the capital which was also unhappy.
Is anyone having this kind of problem on this version?
Edit: forgot to mention that i found a religion with the follower beliefs Mosques and Synagogues specifically to combat unhappiness and had both of them in every single city since medieval era.

I bet you don't lock growth in your cities? Needs increase only when a city grows.

 

[Recursive]

Maybe it's because I'm playing games with lots of civs (12) so there's often a 'bigger fish' but to be honest I find the AI hates backstabbers already. In my current game Assyria did well for once, but backstabbed someone and started to crumble as multiple civs denounced them. Leading to the rest of the world to denounce them, and them the braver ones declare war. Which is great of course! It's not like they had captured a lot of citites or anything though, and fighting multiple opponents they lost more and more ground over time. Eventually they were right near the bottom of rankings. But their relations with other people don't seem to have improved? People keep wanting to take more of their land. I guess this makes sense as they are unpopular and not very strong any more. Feels a bit like the penalty for backstabbing should wear off eventually of not affect so many things though. Compared to for example civs that are a current threat/have taken other civ's cities. In the same game, Greece also backstabbed someone but wasn't able to capitalize on it so they more of less did poorly for the rest of the game.

That said, diplo in other areas is good. I make a mistake early on my accepting a friendship with Greece which people disliked, but over time realised it was better to just have general positive relations with them and make friends with other players instead. I managed to convince many of my friends to denounce the two leaders - Siam and Brazil, and am hoping to catch them up over time. Or at least beat China who is still currently in third place!


Have you tried playing with tech trading? I've found it extremely useful in empowering my allies and am actually able to buy techs from them as well sometimes - so helps both of us. I even have civs gift me tech sometimes .

You may have a point. I'll take a more nuanced look at this.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I bet you don't lock growth in your cities? Needs increase only when a city grows.

Cities are so unhappy that they are not naturally growing (most of them were around 15 population when i entered the industrial era) , had a total of 51 unhappiness from poverty alone in my 10 cities, 40ish unhappiness from distress.
I was not far behind the leader in anything (i was the 4th in score board, first in social policies, third in techs -two techs behind the leader-, built 5 wonders, second or third in cities count but had a pretty low population around 160.

How many cities do you have?

10 in the current celts game, i spawned alone on a mini continent and i had enough space to settle a couple more if i wanted to.
The previous game as ethiopia i had 7 and encountered the exact same issue.

 

[Soupy Delicious]

Just wanna say, I last played VP about 4 years ago when it was still a blast but couldn't be called a polished product... that's changed. In many ways, it doesn't even feel the same! It's all so much better- it is so, so good. Guiltily I'll admit that some of my favourite new content is the updated custom promotion icons. They are absolutely delicious.

(p.s. are swamps meant to GIVE +5% tile defence? In the civopedia it states 'reduce defence by')

 

[CppMaster]

Cities are so unhappy that they are not naturally growing (most of them were around 15 population when i entered the industrial era)

They do, but slower. They wouldn't have that high needs if they had growth locked earlier.

 

[Valvts]

Anyone else experiences insane spy activity? Late game, every turn gold is stolen, even by allies who I asked to stop, all great people are assassinated. I have my own spy in every city, doesnt really help. I lined to the police station tech, because it was insufferable. This is very discouraging to play

Is there a chance to add cooldown on advanced actions? I swear to god I had 1000~ Gold stolen each turn for about 20 turns until I finally got the police station.

No one listens to "stop spying on me"!

 

[Tugboatspotter]

Anyone else experiences insane spy activity? Late game, every turn gold is stolen, even by allies who I asked to stop, all great people are assassinated. I have a spy in every city. This is very discouraging to play

It is normal if you are the best target, which you obviously are. It is just the nature of of the late game. Everyone has more spies, and if you are a juicy target then you have to deal with it.

I wouldn't listen to someone to stop spying either if there is nice rewards. It has to be balanced so that spies are worthwhile.

 

[Valvts]

It is normal if you are the best target, which you obviously are.

It is just the nature of of the late game. Everyone has more spies, and if you are a juicy target then you have to deal with it.

Then this nature of the game is very unfun (the rest is great!). I am also not the best target. Morocco and Poland have more techs, more money, more policies than me. I would understand it if I was snowballing, top score. Far from it. I have 5 cities. Morocco capital makes as much science as my 5 cities.

 

[Tugboatspotter]

Then this nature of the game is very unfun (the rest is great!). I am also not the best target. Morocco and Poland have more techs, more money, more policies than me. I would understand it if I was snowballing, top score. Far from it. I have 5 cities. Morocco capital makes as much science as my 5 cities.

Without more information it is impossible to know why they keep targeting you.

Have the police stations helped?

Have you tried leveling up your spies before setting them to counter AI spies?

 

[CppMaster]

Then this nature of the game is very unfun (the rest is great!). I am also not the best target. Morocco and Poland have more techs, more money, more policies than me. I would understand it if I was snowballing, top score. Far from it. I have 5 cities. Morocco capital makes as much science as my 5 cities.

You don't need to be the best target if they have multiple spies. They could spy on Morocco, Poland and you at the same time.

 

[crdvis16]

Cities are so unhappy that they are not naturally growing (most of them were around 15 population when i entered the industrial era) , had a total of 51 unhappiness from poverty alone in my 10 cities, 40ish unhappiness from distress.
I was not far behind the leader in anything (i was the 4th in score board, first in social policies, third in techs -two techs behind the leader-, built 5 wonders, second or third in cities count but had a pretty low population around 160.



10 in the current celts game, i spawned alone on a mini continent and i had enough space to settle a couple more if i wanted to.
The previous game as ethiopia i had 7 and encountered the exact same issue.

Could try spreading trade routes around and working merchants if poverty specifically is the issue. I find that banks+customs+caravansary help a lot once unlocked.

Also, I think sometimes that waiting for unhappiness to naturally stop your city growth is too late and gets you stuck in unhappiness. If you're already at ~50% happiness I think it's important to survey your cities and see if any of them are set to become increasingly unhappy upon the next citizen birth. If they are I'll often stop growth rather than let them add another citizen.

This patch feels tougher with happiness when wide but I'm not sure why.