new patch release

[LifeOfBrian]

SV with The Netherlands on T342, Deity, Oval, standard (no ruins, events, tech trading or RAs). 6 cities, no religion (on purpose - God of all Creation), Tradition, Artistry, Rationalism, Freedom. UA provided so much culture and gold this felt much easier than a standard Deity game. Biggest danger came from Arabia that conquered Poland and Korea, eventually having 12 cities, leading in all aspects of the game and would have won a CV had I not had so much culture. Like with the previous Indonesia game, the main key to catching up in science were the great scientists, even though I didn't use the science process at all, otherwise I would have had an even easier path to a SV. Freedom's ability to purchase SS parts is just too strong, I think the empire cooldown period between buying parts should be at least 8 turns because that's usually the fastest time a Progress/Authority capital/strongest city will need to build a SS part. This game no religion was dominant, but Ethiopia, Maya and Russia all lost their religions, so they had religionless cities for the majority of late game.

Some other observations:
- I wanted to sell my vote in favour of making Carthage's religion the dominant one (resolution proposed by Carthage), only for Carthage saying the trade value would be around -300 -> so I'd have to pay them to vote in favour of their religion. The other two proposals were Global Peace Accord and an open door resolution, so it's not like they switched their priority to wanting me to vote against sanctioning them.
- the AI is too willing to sell luxury resources to the Netherlands even if that means they lose their monopoly, for example I bought so many copies of Salt from Russia I stole their monopoly, plus the Maya had 5 copies of Cocoa, I had 4, but I bought 2 from them and thus stole the monopoly from them. I think this code could benefit from being looked at.
- the AI is too willing to sell coal -> even the AIs that denounced me were still willing to sell their coal to me for 8-10 gpt. I think the AI would benefit more from denying me coal to build factories etc. than having some extra gold, especially because they're usually already swimming in gold. So that's something that I hope will be looked at.
- settling your capital on a mining/trapping luxury as the Netherlands is just so strong - I settled on Copper, took Mining as the first tech, sold Copper for 5gpt to Russia on turn 9 and got an extra 3 culture from turn 11 (I had to spend two turns moving my settler) onwards. Could the Netherlands AI perhaps be taught to do that?
- Arabia had 7 puppet cities in the late renaissance era and was stomping AIs around. It didn't take Imperialism or Autocracy nor did it attack me (their neighbour) even though I was the only civ standing in the way of their CV. So that's an example of how the AI fails to make the final move or two necessary to win the game, allowing the human player to come through. Perhaps something to look at, if possible.
- I think you should be able to buy great persons even in cities with no majority religion, I don't understand why that's a prerequisite. Given the current state of the religious game and non-founders not being able to buy inquisitors, it can leave a civ, especially non-founding, without the option of buying great persons in the late game. In my game, 5 of my 6 cities didn't have a majority religion, but luckily the smallest city had it, so I could buy my great scientists there. But I still had to spend a lot of faith on buying up a few missionaries just in case that city lost its majority religion so I could then bring it back via missionaries.

A lovely experience, thanks again for the patch!

 

[JamesNinelives]

- the AI is too willing to sell coal -> even the AIs that denounced me were still willing to sell their coal to me for 8-10 gpt. I think the AI would benefit more from denying me coal to build factories etc. than having some extra gold, especially because they're usually already swimming in gold. So that's something that I hope will be looked at.

I think you should be able to buy great persons even in cities with no majority religion, I don't understand why that's a prerequisite.

I haven't played this patch, but in so far as the main version I agree!

 

[myeong1129]

Few personal balance notes from several plays:

-Current Morocco seems to be extremely OP. Never saw that guy falling below rank 1~3 from any game I've played.
As I play it I realized its ability to ignore the trade route's distance penalty is quite broken. I was able to hit 1000+gpt from the renaissance era, literally buying off every building that is on construction without any worry. In late-game I ended up with 7280gpt, earning 90+gpt from a single land trade route to an allied city-state with help of trader sid's. It also seemed to affect the whole game balance as civs neighbored with Morocco generally starts with far better gpt from early game compared to civs from another continent. I understand the concept of this civ and quite like it, but it definitely needs some nerfs.

- I think required votes to end the game should increase, while vassal's votes in world congress should be penalized. As capitulation causes the votes of two civs to be focused on one player, it makes it too easy to win with diplo victory before domination victory. It also kinda doesn't make sense that vassal controls far more votes than its master in congress. I've increased DIPLO_VICTORY_CIV_DELEGATES_COEFFICIENT to 10 and DIPLO_VICTORY_CIV_DELEGATES_CONSTANT to 20, and it was still fairly achievable when I focused on city-states and capitulations.

- Personally think Shoshone is too weak. I think this civ's current theme is on early advantages to snowball, but firstly its scout option depends purely on luck, and secondly, while it doesn't really have huge advantages over other early-game-focused civs (e.g. Aztecs), most of its ability becomes meaningless around mid-game since there will be no ancient ruins and land to settle. Also, Tipi is the only improvement that doesn't end up with 10+ sum yields while also having no special effect like Brazilwood camp or Moai. Comparing Tipi and Kasbah, Kasbah has better sum yields, better defense modifiers, same nearby enemy dmg, and is usually guaranteed to be built 6 tiles per city, while Tipi is nearly impossible to be built 6 per city since it can't be adjacent to each other, can't connect resource, and requires flat land. Tipi's only advantages over Kasbah are its required tech and food yield, but Kasbah's food problem is easily solvable since Morocco fits Freedom, when Shoshone rarely goes it. I suggest Tipi's later-game yields could be buffed as the only advantage left to Shoshone is 15% defense bonus in homeland about then.

- Not related to balance, but AIs keep offering nonsense deals telling me to sell them my city for free (this started from this patch). They trade cities with each other for nothing also.

Lastly, ugh it's just so hard to wait for the next patch! I'm looking forward to it rly much.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

I agree, Morocco was *insane* in my last playthrough (on immortal) as well.

 

[Recursive]

AI has been configured for next version by ilteroi to only accept a city in exchange for a city, apparently.

 

[2506]

AI has been configured for next version by ilteroi to only accept a city in exchange for a city, apparently.

Does this mean that you cannot sell a conquered city back to its original owner for gold?

 

[JamesNinelives]

@myeong1129 you mean the Encampment, right?

Kasbahs are easily the strongest Unique Improvement IMO so it's not really a good comparison for earlier UIs. Looking at Encampment vs. Moai for example might be fairer. And even compared to other mid-game UIs, the Kasbah certainly performs stronger than say the Chateau. I'm not opposed to buffing the Encampment, but if Morocco stands out as being stronger than other civs maybe nerfing Morocco slightly should be looked at instead. I'm a big fan of UIs so I'm inclined to adjust the trade route ability.

That said, Morocco's success depend partly on a quiet early-game. If they get attacked before Chivalry they have relatively little going for them, so they are suceptible to warmongers like the Huns or the Aztecs. Although the fact that trading with them is so lucrative perhaps encourages people not to do so? Not sure.

The Shoshone on the other hand do excellently early-game and tend to expand faster as well. I do think the Shoshone AI underperforms because they don't know how to use their Unique Ability very well. In player hands though, even if you only get one ancient ruin that's pretty much a guaranteed free tech (or sometimes free faith) which can be quite significant. When I play Shoshone I tend to be able to grab at least 3 or 4 ancient ruins fairly consistently. I find them at least as strong as the other civs I've played recently (Byzantium, The Iroquois, Indonesia).

 

[pineappledan]

How's the next version comin' along, G? Any updates?

 

[Recursive]

Does this mean that you cannot sell a conquered city back to its original owner for gold?

Seems to be. Not sure if that's still to be tweaked.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

I'm a big fan of UIs so I'm inclined to adjust the trade route ability.

Easiest way to adjust would be simply throw away the distance related manipulation of trade route yields in general and all would be equal. That mechanism isn't adding that much in my eyes.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Easiest way to adjust would be simply throw away the distance related manipulation of trade route yields in general and all would be equal. That mechanism isn't adding that much in my eyes.

It makes trade more interesting IMO. With the distance factor you have to make a tradeoff between longer more lucrative trade routes and shorter, safer ones.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

It makes trade more interesting IMO. With the distance factor you have to make a tradeoff between longer more lucrative trade routes and shorter, safer ones.

At the moment, the AI is a bit irrational with its DoW, but else you should be able to predict atleast for the next 20 turns who might turn against you and avoid risky trade routes. I had to consider that already before the mechanic was added, that's nothing new nor is it really interesting.
It's also illogical, that the same trade route loses often half its value after you have build a normally beneficial building which extends your trade route range.

 

[azum4roll]

AI has been configured for next version by ilteroi to only accept a city in exchange for a city, apparently.

That doesn't do much, seeing AIs often trade their core city for a faraway city plus a couple of luxes and like 10GPT. Unless he also disabled add-ons so it can only be a city vs city trade? I still don't want to see them trading core cities though.

I'd want to disable all city trading except selling a city to its original owner.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Can we get an option in the startup menu to disable, like azum4roll mentioned, all city trading except selling a city to its original owner?

 

[2506]

I'd want to disable all city trading except selling a city to its original owner.

Exactly.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Won a SV with Brazil and the main difference compared to previous games was that I couldn't spend any of my faith in the Industrial era because none of my cities had a majority religion (I was a non-founder and playing peacefully). So ended the game with over 17 thousand faith - having played Tradition&Rationalism, I could have used that faith to speed up my victory by purchasing great engineers or scientists. So I'll reiterate my suggestion to allow purchasing great persons in cities without a majority religion.

Also something I noticed, not sure if intended - the "non-warmonger" civs almost never annex the cities they capture. In my games on this patch I've had Ethiopia, Arabia, Poland,..., capturing enemy cities (including tradition capitals!) and never ever annexing them, always puppeting them. I'm not sure what the "thought process" of the AI is on when to annex and when to puppet, but capturing tradition capitals often seems like a very good candidate for annexing instead of puppeting.

 

[Tekamthi]

I'd want to disable all city trading except selling a city to its original owner.

I sometimes find myself wishing I could convince AI to trade a city it forward settled for one on my borders.. ie if they've been cut off from having contiguous borders with it, and the trade gives opportunity to fix this

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Won a SV with Brazil and the main difference compared to previous games was that I couldn't spend any of my faith in the Industrial era because none of my cities had a majority religion (I was a non-founder and playing peacefully). So ended the game with over 17 thousand faith - having played Tradition&Rationalism, I could have used that faith to speed up my victory by purchasing great engineers or scientists. So I'll reiterate my suggestion to allow purchasing great persons in cities without a majority religion.

Also something I noticed, not sure if intended - the "non-warmonger" civs almost never annex the cities they capture. In my games on this patch I've had Ethiopia, Arabia, Poland,..., capturing enemy cities (including tradition capitals!) and never ever annexing them, always puppeting them. I'm not sure what the "thought process" of the AI is on when to annex and when to puppet, but capturing tradition capitals often seems like a very good candidate for annexing instead of puppeting.

my experience is the exact opposite of that, warmonger civs especially Shaka, Rome and Askia annex pretty much every city they capture.

 

[JamesNinelives]

my experience is the exact opposite of that, warmonger civs especially Shaka, Rome and Askia annex pretty much every city they capture.

I think that's what Brian is saying. Shaka will annex lots of cities, but Haile Selassie won't.

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Thanks, James, that's what I wanted to say.

And I'm not complaining or anything, as their opponent I'm glad that they're not annexing tradition capitals, but it seems suboptimal. On the other hand in my current game Carthage annexed three conquered city states and two Mayan cities. So it seems there's a big difference between tradition and non-tradition civs?