New Official Version - October 7th (10-7)

[Zanteogo]

If I understand correctly, AI bonuses on settling the first city were removed (in the version before this?). Later bonuses were increased to compensate though. I like the changes to be honest. Before I had to be laser-focused to get a religion, but also extremely agressive in settling in order to claim territory. I agree founding is too easy now, but I like that the early-game is less intense.

It's also super jarring because it's like the AI suddenly wakes up at a set point. This is most noticeable if you play an early warmonger. You will steamroll your neighbors up until fourth era when the AI starts producing walls of units. If your looking to play optimal this means pounding the AI right at the start of third era to force them into vassals before they kick into overdrive. Your vassal AI slaves get the same bonuses as the free AI civs. (and unless your completely inept will never rebel against you)

Not saying this is fully good or bad. It does feel a tad artificial though.

 

[tu_79]

It's also super jarring because it's like the AI suddenly wakes up at a set point. This is most noticeable if you play an early warmonger. You will steamroll your neighbors up until fourth era when the AI starts producing walls of units. If your looking to play optimal this means pounding the AI right at the start of third era to force them into vassals before they kick into overdrive. Your vassal AI slaves get the same bonuses as the free AI civs. (and unless your completely inept will never rebel against you)

Not saying this is fully good or bad. It does feel a tad artificial though.

Well, the handicaps try to emulate the strength of a human player. If, by the grace of handicaps, there's a sudden spike in power, then they are not well tuned.
I suggest that you take the time to experiment with other values and share what works best for you.
Handicap A affects the whole game difficulty, handicap B affects mid and late game and handicap C affects mostly late game. So, if you find that there's a huge step between early and mid, but the late game is not really harder than the mid game, then reduce significantly the handicap B value. You might want to increase handicap A a little bit if you find the early game too easy first.

For anyone interested in doing this properly, it's better to begin with finding the right value for the early game. That's A + B*k + C*k^2. During the early game k = 1, so just sum up A, B and C, and that's the value you like for the early game. Then, if you want to modify B value make sure that the early game handicap sum remains the same.

Example. A = 4, B = 2.5, C = 0.5
Let's say the early game is fine but the mid game is too hard. You know you want a lower handicap value by renaissance (k=3). And you want to try a B value of 1.5. Since the early game was fine and you don't want to mess it up, then you want that handicap at k=1 remains 7.
Handicap at k=1 would be 4 + 1.5*1 + 0.5*1 = 6, so you need to increase handicap A to 5 so the early game does not change.

If it is handicap C value which is at fault, then it is trickier. You must note first the handicap sums that are working for you both the early and mid game. Supposing the last example was right, then you like an early game with handicap 7 and a renaissance game with handicap 14. By Atomic era (k=5), your handicap sum is 5 + 1.5*5 + 0.5*25 = 25, but you find it not challenging enough, so you know you have to increase handicap C, but you must not change the sums in the other periods. So let's try a C value of 1. We want to find the values of A and B that will sum up the same as before. That's an equation system.
A' + B'*1 + 1*1 = 7
A' + B'*3 + 1*9 = 14
Solve this (A' = 6.5, B' = - 0.5) and difficulty will remain the same for those periods.

As you see, it's not just modifying one value, you must do this while keeping the rest equal.
We began with (A=4, B=2.5, C=0.5), to reduce the difficulty mid game onwards we changed it to (A=5, B=1.5, C=0.5), finding that the late game was too weak and we modified it again to (A=6.5, B=-0.5, C=1).

Hope this clarifies.

 

[Milae]

To me the most jarring part of the game is from ancient into classical. Ais aren't getting much bonuses at the start, then all of a sudden they found new cities, get a golden age and then get the triple bonus for entering classical and all of a sudden they are nearly in medieval and on 5+ policies.

From there on they are mostly just getting the era bonuses and infinite money from the money and golden age bonuses.

I feel like the fact that there are bonuses from founding cities is always going to create some weirdness because for a human, a new city is an investment in the future but for ais they are also the best way of getting extra yields early game.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I played around 8 or 9 games on this version and i really like a lot of things about it but there some points i'd like to bring the attention to.

• Progress is just so weak compared to the other two ancient trees, i'll write a separate thread about it later but honestly playing progress feels like intentionally shooting yourself in the leg when every other ancient tree is way better in almost every single aspect.
• Tributing city states stops being beneficial even for authority civs at around medieval when the max amount of yields tributed at once caps at around 300 of the respective yield; i know it's the new system but it just invalidates a big part of Authority kit, the interaction with CS and a complete aspect of some civs UA (Mongolia and Zulus) way too early which imo needs some revision of the numbers of caps.
• Stepping up from Emperor to Immortal feels challenging and i really like it but on both difficulties there is a pattern the was repeated in each game of the 8 games about 2 major & sudden difficulty spikes

1. The AI shoots ahead in tech Classical era beyond any capability of any human player to compete with a gap of more than 10 techs sometimes; i remember fighting heavy skirmishers at turn 160 Epic speed (roughly turn 110 standard) which is a bit ridiculous.
2. Early renaissance era when the AI dips deep in Statecraft tree the overall needs modifier skyrockets beyond any way to satisfy them even though every building that reduces unhappiness is built.

• AI loves working their specialist slots really early prioritizing them over normal tiles especially food tiles which makes them enter a state of semi stagnation that holds them back for the rest of the game; seeing an AI city with more than 15 pop in the industrial era is not common in my games.
• City governor still does some obnoxious things like working a 1 fort tile on a desert instead of a 4 grassland farm; a human player could overcome this by micro managing but the AI is hurt more by it that i think we could reassess the value of each yield so the governor would value food & production a bit more.
• Swordsmen are kind of overtuned IMO, they are a huge powerspike in the early game ... I think a 1 CS reduction would be fine sot bey do not just annihilate everything with a 17 CS.
• The religious pressure bug? in maps with a lot of water surfaces really screws some games but it's not consistent and does not always occur so i'm not sure if it's a bug at all or just an unintended interaction of how religious pressure works over water.
• The AI heavily prioritizes spreading religion with missionaries over enhancing religion that in one game AI Sweden did not enhance their religion until Industrial era.
• Honestly mount Kilimanjaro is OP af wheter it's in human hands or AI hand that i'd rather we completely remove the movement bonus in hills and just keep the +10% CS .... It's game changing and i personally prefer a balanced wonder with a minor bonus rather than granting the UA of Inca to the lucky one who finds the tile near their lands.
• On a slightly different topic some modmods are super amazing and blend flawlessly withing the VP experience that i totally advocate for their integration if possible in future release namely pineappledan new beliefs, better lakes by Inkaxis, Enhanced Naval and Air warfare by Infixo and AstrixRage respectively.

 

[Zanteogo]

I have to disagree with progress being weak. Particularly on the bigger maps now.

The progress policy that gives happiness is just so good for any play that's close to wide at all. Without it your constantly having happiness issues unless you play tall. (Heck even with it you still have some thanks to tech being too fast right now)

 

[JamesNinelives]

• City governor still does some obnoxious things like working a 1 fort tile on a desert instead of a 4 grassland farm; a human player could overcome this by micro managing but the AI is hurt more by it that i think we could reassess the value of each yield so the governor would value food & production a bit more.

I agree. Not sure why science is valued so highly but I end up micromanaging desert cities as a result.

I have to disagree with progress being weak. Particularly on the bigger maps now.

Yeah. I don't find Progress weak either.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I've been winning with Progress on Deity, it's not weak.

 

[Milae]

I played around 8 or 9 games on this version and i really like a lot of things about it but there some points i'd like to bring the attention to.

• Progress is just so weak compared to the other two ancient trees, i'll write a separate thread about it later but honestly playing progress feels like intentionally shooting yourself in the leg when every other ancient tree is way better in almost every single aspect.
• Tributing city states stops being beneficial even for authority civs at around medieval when the max amount of yields tributed at once caps at around 300 of the respective yield; i know it's the new system but it just invalidates a big part of Authority kit, the interaction with CS and a complete aspect of some civs UA (Mongolia and Zulus) way too early which imo needs some revision of the numbers of caps.
• Stepping up from Emperor to Immortal feels challenging and i really like it but on both difficulties there is a pattern the was repeated in each game of the 8 games about 2 major & sudden difficulty spikes

1. The AI shoots ahead in tech Classical era beyond any capability of any human player to compete with a gap of more than 10 techs sometimes; i remember fighting heavy skirmishers at turn 160 Epic speed (roughly turn 110 standard) which is a bit ridiculous.
2. Early renaissance era when the AI dips deep in Statecraft tree the overall needs modifier skyrockets beyond any way to satisfy them even though every building that reduces unhappiness is built.

• AI loves working their specialist slots really early prioritizing them over normal tiles especially food tiles which makes them enter a state of semi stagnation that holds them back for the rest of the game; seeing an AI city with more than 15 pop in the industrial era is not common in my games.
• City governor still does some obnoxious things like working a 1 fort tile on a desert instead of a 4 grassland farm; a human player could overcome this by micro managing but the AI is hurt more by it that i think we could reassess the value of each yield so the governor would value food & production a bit more.
• Swordsmen are kind of overtuned IMO, they are a huge powerspike in the early game ... I think a 1 CS reduction would be fine sot bey do not just annihilate everything with a 17 CS.
• The religious pressure bug? in maps with a lot of water surfaces really screws some games but it's not consistent and does not always occur so i'm not sure if it's a bug at all or just an unintended interaction of how religious pressure works over water.
• The AI heavily prioritizes spreading religion with missionaries over enhancing religion that in one game AI Sweden did not enhance their religion until Industrial era.
• Honestly mount Kilimanjaro is OP af wheter it's in human hands or AI hand that i'd rather we completely remove the movement bonus in hills and just keep the +10% CS .... It's game changing and i personally prefer a balanced wonder with a minor bonus rather than granting the UA of Inca to the lucky one who finds the tile near their lands.
• On a slightly different topic some modmods are super amazing and blend flawlessly withing the VP experience that i totally advocate for their integration if possible in future release namely pineappledan new beliefs, better lakes by Inkaxis, Enhanced Naval and Air warfare by Infixo and AstrixRage respectively.

I agree with others that Progress is fine. It's probably the slowest one to get going but does scale a lot throughout the game.

You could be right about Swordsmen, I don't actually rush them that often though because it slows down your development so much. I do notice that Pikemen get kinda destroyed by knights so maybe low strength of pikemen is the problem.

Other than that I agree with your points (haven't tried those Mods but I assume they have no bugs/issues?)

 

[LifeOfBrian]

I like the strength of swordsmen because they keep me alive when the AI DoWs me with Knights, Pikemen and Longswordsmen.

Btw, has anyone been able to buy inquisitor as a non founder in a city where an enhanced AI religion is the dominant religion? I haven't and I'm wondering if it's a bug or a change.

 

[andersw]

I played around 8 or 9 games on this version and i really like a lot of things about it but there some points i'd like to bring the attention to.

• Progress is just so weak compared to the other two ancient trees, i'll write a separate thread about it later but honestly playing progress feels like intentionally shooting yourself in the leg when every other ancient tree is way better in almost every single aspect.
• Tributing city states stops being beneficial even for authority civs at around medieval when the max amount of yields tributed at once caps at around 300 of the respective yield; i know it's the new system but it just invalidates a big part of Authority kit, the interaction with CS and a complete aspect of some civs UA (Mongolia and Zulus) way too early which imo needs some revision of the numbers of caps.
• Stepping up from Emperor to Immortal feels challenging and i really like it but on both difficulties there is a pattern the was repeated in each game of the 8 games about 2 major & sudden difficulty spikes

1. The AI shoots ahead in tech Classical era beyond any capability of any human player to compete with a gap of more than 10 techs sometimes; i remember fighting heavy skirmishers at turn 160 Epic speed (roughly turn 110 standard) which is a bit ridiculous.
2. Early renaissance era when the AI dips deep in Statecraft tree the overall needs modifier skyrockets beyond any way to satisfy them even though every building that reduces unhappiness is built.

• AI loves working their specialist slots really early prioritizing them over normal tiles especially food tiles which makes them enter a state of semi stagnation that holds them back for the rest of the game; seeing an AI city with more than 15 pop in the industrial era is not common in my games.
• City governor still does some obnoxious things like working a 1 fort tile on a desert instead of a 4 grassland farm; a human player could overcome this by micro managing but the AI is hurt more by it that i think we could reassess the value of each yield so the governor would value food & production a bit more.
• Swordsmen are kind of overtuned IMO, they are a huge powerspike in the early game ... I think a 1 CS reduction would be fine sot bey do not just annihilate everything with a 17 CS.
• The religious pressure bug? in maps with a lot of water surfaces really screws some games but it's not consistent and does not always occur so i'm not sure if it's a bug at all or just an unintended interaction of how religious pressure works over water.
• The AI heavily prioritizes spreading religion with missionaries over enhancing religion that in one game AI Sweden did not enhance their religion until Industrial era.
• Honestly mount Kilimanjaro is OP af wheter it's in human hands or AI hand that i'd rather we completely remove the movement bonus in hills and just keep the +10% CS .... It's game changing and i personally prefer a balanced wonder with a minor bonus rather than granting the UA of Inca to the lucky one who finds the tile near their lands.
• On a slightly different topic some modmods are super amazing and blend flawlessly withing the VP experience that i totally advocate for their integration if possible in future release namely pineappledan new beliefs, better lakes by Inkaxis, Enhanced Naval and Air warfare by Infixo and AstrixRage respectively.

I agree with progress looks weak (but I dont have any good suggestions of what/how to fix).
Yes, ai spike at classic is skyrocketlike it really needs tuning.
As wide warmonger I beeline machinery and start the first project (forgot the name of it) straight away to keep happiness somewhat in check, at some point I basically go building-project-building-project in most cities not to drown in unhappiness.
Swordsmen are strong but its a melee unit that require iron, I find them ok.
Yes, the AI is very keen on spreading no matter the diplo situation it can cause (with me in particular).
I agree, Kilimanjaro is too op.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

To me the most jarring part of the game is from ancient into classical. Ais aren't getting much bonuses at the start, then all of a sudden they found new cities, get a golden age and then get the triple bonus for entering classical and all of a sudden they are nearly in medieval and on 5+ policies.

From there on they are mostly just getting the era bonuses and infinite money from the money and golden age bonuses.

I feel like the fact that there are bonuses from founding cities is always going to create some weirdness because for a human, a new city is an investment in the future but for ais they are also the best way of getting extra yields early game.

Agree with you.
I think the AI has too many bonuses in early game and then suck later from industrial age on. While the early game spike comes from too many bonus yields, especially from founding cities, the downfall of the AI in industrial age comes from the wrong long term planning. They simply work too many specialists in early and early mid and then have below mediocre sized cities.

I fear an increase of the base values to compensate the bad late game and in a later version the fix of the bad behavior to work too many specialists. If both will meet, the AI will be horrible to be beaten.
Better fixing first the background and teach how to have long term investments in balance to short term things.

There is still an open question, why an AI gets bonuses for being successful. Cause GP birth, settling cities are for its own a reward. Should the difficulty compensation be really done for some

 

[JamesNinelives]

I like swordsmen the way they are, given the resource requirement.

 

[JungleBucks]

Good stuff as always! It's been a while since I've sat down for a nice game of civ, so I'm glad there's a new update, and appreciate the constant work that goes into this.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I like swordsmen the way they are, given the resource requirement.

If anything, the two units I'm looking at are the first horsies -- if they aren't rushed, then I find they quickly lose the majority of their impact, at least for standard speeds. With how effortless Spearmen come online, and how good they've been performing in general after receiving a CS bump on top of 'Formation' (a change that was warranted), they now hard counter both the Horseman and Chariot (even holding up well against Elephants...) almost a little too well. I know that's their entire purpose to counter those units, but they're single-handedly obsoleting 3 early strategic units due to the value you can currently draw from spears alone, as unlike those mounted units, Spearmen can also attack walled cities without as much consequence, along with receiving defensive bonuses in any terrain.

 

[JamesNinelives]

I'm playing another game as Indonesia! Epic speed, Huge map, Continents Plus, Emperor difficulty. 13 civs, 26 city-states. No crashes, which is great. This is also the first game I've played on this version where I've been taken the lead!

A lot of areas of the game feel good. Playing against the Celts with their updated pantheons, and civs with the new Stars and Sky pantheon they both seem in a good place. I like that colonists are available earlier. Policies feel like they are in a good place to me.The new forts are much more interesting than they used to be! They are too strong though, I actually avoided building them in some cases in this game because they didn't balanced in the mid to late game.

I was the dominant religion in this game and I still feel that religious pressure via water travels too far. Once I established my religious territory I basically didn't need to use more missionaries or inquisitors because my passive pressure was enough. In previous games the AI would use missionaries to fight back, but here I got the impression they were focused more on defense (like I was in my previous game).

Tech speed is indeed faster than I would like, at least on my settings. I was lucky to have a territory rich in production (and gold) that helped me keep up. Specifically I had lots of hills near my capital and a large area of forest to the south with lots of adjacency for lumber mills. I spent my first couple of turns scouting for a better capital location, so my start was delayed just a little but luckily was rewarded with a location with lots of resources.

Spoiler Start :

Spoiler Ancient :

Spoiler Industrial :

Coal numbers seem low to me. Revealing resources is usually exciting, and it's part of the game that I look forward to! In this game I had more territory than anyone else but a grand total of 2 coal which just feels bad. My previous two games on this version were similar. It is partly just luck on my part, but it would be really nice for there to be just a little more coal. Especially now that Refineries grant 1 coal and 1 iron each. There's much more iron around, so if the coal number stay the same I think Refineries should go back to granting 2 coal like they used to. Aluminium also seems quite high, with more aluminium on the map than any other strategic resouce (including oil). It's nice that late-game units like subs and helis are easier to build, but it shouldn't be the most common strategic.

As others have noted, bribed wars do seem rather common. To a degree this actually balances out civs having lots of defensive pacts, but ideally there would be less of both. I did want to note, because people often say the AI is unwilling to engage in DPs with the player or trade tech with them that I was able to do both relatively often in this game. The DP offers mostly correlated with my military strength and how much they like me. The tech trading (and even sometimes gifts) mostly came from civs that I had sold or gifted techs to previously.

AI strategic valuation is a bit too low. I want to note that it is much better than when Greece would sometimes value a single horse at 1785 gold. I like that I can't exploit selling strategics any more. The AI is too willing to sell their strategics to me for a low low price though. It's actually fine in the early-game, but as the world economy expands the deals I can get other people's strategics for feels like it can be eploitative in a different way. I get this is an area that's difficult to balance!

On city-state diplomacy there's something that seem wrong to me, but I'm not sure if it is intended. If you made a promise to protect a city-state and then your military drops below the required threshold you loose influence there is a large penalty. Firstly you loose a small amount of influence, but that's reasonable. Secondly though, you count as having agressively attacked the city-state! This means they will not grant you quests for a long time (70 turns on my settings), and negative opinion of you decays more slowly. I don't think this is reasonable. You can remove the 'you attacked us' penalty if you become friends with them, but IMO there shouldn't be such a severe consequence to begin with.

Spoiler CS is not happy with me :

Minor bug: if you pop an ancient ruin before you found a city it's possible to get a reward that does nothing. I got 'production to your nearest city' but had no cities. Will write a report for it when I have a moment. Another minor bug (that's already on Github): the AI will offer to sell you their embassy when you already have an embassy with them.

Spoiler Want another one? :

Lastly I wanted to note that trade deals get a bit wonky in the late game. Specifically the AI will want to trade maps with you, but stack several offers of maps in top of each other. I'm not sure how this is possible but it's really very strange. For example they will ask for 'map of your territory' in exchange of 'map of my territory' and some gold on one side. But if you click to remove the map the trade value changes (indicating the item has been removed), and yet there is another one underneath lol. I get offers like my stragetic and my maps twice for some gold for and your maps three times. At least the valuation for maps is more reasonable now, which is an improvement relative to the previous version!

 

[Nightmare Dusk]

-- Change Tech Costs (from CEP):

UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =      60 WHERE GridX =  1; --35
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =     100 WHERE GridX =  2; --55
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =     125 WHERE GridX =  3; --105
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =     225 WHERE GridX =  4; --175
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =     350 WHERE GridX =  5; --275
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =     600 WHERE GridX =  6; --485
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    1000 WHERE GridX =  7; --780
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    1500 WHERE GridX =  8; --1150
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    2500 WHERE GridX =  9; --1600
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    3500 WHERE GridX = 10; --2350
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    5200 WHERE GridX = 11; --3100
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    6500 WHERE GridX = 12; --4100
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    7900 WHERE GridX = 13; --5100
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =    9000 WHERE GridX = 14; --6400
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =   10000 WHERE GridX = 15; --7700
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =   11100 WHERE GridX = 16; --8800
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =   12200 WHERE GridX = 17; --9500
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =   13500 WHERE GridX = 18; --NEW!
UPDATE Technologies SET Cost =   15000 WHERE GridX = 19; --NEW!

-- Speed Change
UPDATE GameSpeeds SET ResearchPercent = 300 WHERE Type = 'GAMESPEED_MARATHON';
UPDATE GameSpeeds SET ResearchPercent = 175 WHERE Type = 'GAMESPEED_EPIC';

These are my values for epic on a huge map, seems to do what I want (date of inventions roughly matching the real world).

I really enjoy where this project is going, things like tech costs are minor balance issues - shows how polished this mod already has become!

Kind regards
XSamatan

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but i went to the TechCostChanges in the mod and changed epic speed tech costs like you show here, but it does nothing once i save the file and reload the game. Why is this not working?

1. I'm just using notepad to edit if that matters
2. It's already been put into a modpack before i try editing it in case that matters as well

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but i went to the TechCostChanges in the mod and changed epic speed tech costs like you show here, but it does nothing once i save the file and reload the game. Why is this not working?

1. I'm just using notepad to edit if that matters
2. It's already been put into a modpack before i try editing it in case that matters as well

I would try to delete the chache under C:\Users\.....\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache

 

[Nightmare Dusk]

I would try to delete the chache under C:\Users\.....\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache

Tried that, didn't work. I even tried iobit uninstalled civ 5 and the mod and reinstalled from scratch and nothing changed when i made the same tech file adjustments.

 

[psparky]

Tried that, didn't work. I even tried iobit uninstalled civ 5 and the mod and reinstalled from scratch and nothing changed when i made the same tech file adjustments.

You would need to remake the modpack for the new value to be picked up.

 

[Nightmare Dusk]

You would need to remake the modpack for the new value to be picked up.

Eww, was hoping that wasn't the case, but thank you for confirming my suspicions