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Hey all,

New version inbound, to celebrate the beginning of summertime (for anyone in the northern hemisphere, anyway).

Features a long-awaited rework of the spy system by Gazebo and some other cool stuff.

Changelog:
Code:
Balance
  Spies
  - Spies now earn experience for actions, making their leveling process more gradual.
      Leveling speed and XP gain is all editable in XML so we can tweak the speed.
  - Removed all the instant yield stuff from spy actions as-is.
  - Removed the potential scaling for event potency, as it caused UI inconsistencies.
  - Fix for espionage potential calculation (ilteroi)
  - Overhauled the notification system for spies, fixing a bunch of missing text and making the pop ups/notifications provide better info.
  - Added a new unique icon for spy missions (no longer the generic exclamation mark)
  - Added another spy mission, ‘Stoke’, which makes your spy increase a city’s yield unhappiness for a duration after the event completes. Useful for targeting cities that are already unhappy or on the edge.
  - Counterspies are more effective at identifying spies.
  - Added a new spy yield system: siphon yields. Instead of arbitrary yield amounts, there are now spy missions that siphon and steal Tourism, Science, or Gold.
      Currently at 15% of target city production for Gold and Science, and 25% for Tourism (30 turn duration, with a minimum of 1 per turn).
      At the end of the mission, the siphoned yields are stolen from the city and given to the spy owner.
      So yes, it actually steals, but the % nature means it is always proportional to the target city’s output.
      Siphons are limited to 1 per yield per city.

  Defensive Pacts
  - AI and humans are now limited to 2 Defensive Pacts, plus 1 for every 10 living non-vassal civs (that aren't on your team)
  - Each civ on a team counts as 1 Defensive Pact
  - Your limit is displayed on the Defensive Pact's trade item tooltip
  - The limit is dynamic and can go down as players are conquered or vassalized
  - These values are customizable in CoreDefines.sql for both the (1) and (2) mods, and you can give the AI a lower number if you wish
  - The Palace of Culture and Science (Order NW) removes the Defensive Pact limit (for both humans and AI)
  - This equalizes the rules for humans and AI players.

  Beliefs
  - Ceremonial Burial nerfed: 15 Culture/Faith -> 10 Culture/Faith

  Reformation Wonders
  - Now actually give 1 vote per X cities as displayed (had an undocumented minimum of 1 and maximum equal to the # of religions)

UI
- Automated cities and units now have a gear indicator to show that they're automated
- Moved the World Congress session countdown timer to the World Congress icon
- Time Victory overview now includes the added score elements from VP
- Capturing a city that can be liberated with OCC now has a "Destroy the City!" button instead of a "Raze the City!" button
- Integrated "condensed help texts" into VP (trimming down a few tooltips)
- Trimmed Brazilwood help text
- Added auto-resize for unit panel promotions

Trade Deals/Deal UI
- The 75 warscore threshold required for third party peace is now customizable (DiploAIOptions.sql), valid values range from 1 to 100
- Cleaned up a lot of the awful UI code
- Peace Deals now display the "Min Value" the AI needs to accept peace when it's winning
- Tooltips will now always display accurate information about why an item can't be added to the deal
- Changed "Demand" button to "Request" when requesting help (unfortunately the leader animation is hardcoded...)
- Removed tooltip from blacked out Demand button while at war
- Fixed several bugs

AI
  City Production
  - AI is smarter at building Settlers

  Diplomacy
  - AI now has more leeway for peace willingness if it previously agreed, for less flip-flopping
  - Added sanity checks on AI gifts (won't gift if you recently refused to make a promise, broke a promise or requested help)

  Tactical/Operational
  - Improvements to tactical AI
  - AI can now upgrade units that are on missions or in armies

Bugfixes
- Fixed Indonesia's UA being unable to spawn its unique luxuries in owned territory, so it should actually be useful again
- Fixed automated cities removing World Wonders from the production queue
- Fixed Culture and Faith not working for "Yield From Yield" conversion
- Fixed Border Growth Points not appearing in city expansion timer (they were counted, just not displayed)
- Fixed killing Barbarian units with city bombardment not granting Influence
- Fixed being able to steal Natural Wonders (and possibly Mountains) by settling cities next to them
- Fixed bug where the AI would consider a "no settling" promise to be broken if you settled on the same turn that the promise ended
- Fixed AI players defending wilderness areas
- Fixed bug with Bandeirantes unit panel (EUI)
- Fixed some Great People and Work names being switched around

Misc
- LUA hook for city captures has been changed so that it always triggers before the city's fate is chosen, and before NumTimesOwned is incremented
- CanMoveAllTerrain enables doing a ranged attack anywhere

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PigpajKyIF-nx3x-6A7NbcfJUyhIJR39/view?usp=sharing

Online as of 4:00 PM CST. Not savegame compatible.

---
Version 2.2.1:
Code:
Bugfixes
- Fixed air units not being able to attack

UI
- AI assigned specialists can now be locked in place by clicking on them with Manual Specialist Control disabled
- When a custom name is added to a unit, the "(Base Unit Name)" which follows the name is now removed in the tooltip

Link has been updated.

Online as of 2:06 PM CST. Partially savegame compatible; updating won't crash the game, but existing air units won't gain the ability to attack (newly built air units will).
 
Last edited:
Thank you for your work and the patch as always!

Capitals are natural targets for spies from both players and AI. With spies now siphoning yields, I fear this may be an indirect nerf to tradition plays. If spies are effective in any meaningful way, this means that tradition cities will suffer a permanent -15% gold/production malus from spies. If counterspies are effective, then that would negate spy actions. And we are back at square 1 with either having effective spies and frustrating experience or effective counterspies and spies not very impactful.

The new stoke mission would hurt players much more than AI, especially wide plays because most of the time players are barely at 50% happiness. AI has a lot of bonuses that made them rarely ever dip below 50% so this action wouldn't do much for players. I could see this being very frustrating to deal with if you've got a wide empire and have multiple AI target your cities with stoke.

I don't agree that the spy system had to be so complicated. I think the old "set it and forget it" system does a better job at balancing bonuses and maluses.
 
-15% gold/production

Production can no longer be affected. Gold, Science and Tourism are the only yields that can currently be siphoned from cities.
 
Using 2.2, unable to attack with bombers, the option is just not there. Would like to confirm if anyone else if having this problem before opening an issue.
 

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Using 2.2, unable to attack with bombers, the option is just not there. Would like to confirm if anyone else if having this problem before opening an issue.
Try again when the city isn't in resistance.
 
Big thumbs up for being creative and possibly solving the two biggest balance issues with the current game, tourism victory being possible way too easy and coming way to early along with the spying system being with the huge chucks of gold appearing out of thin air being so silly an it was making games unfun.

Have the AI been taught how to use the new spying system to target potential winner threats and early enough? I noticed that i get constant spam that the AI had succeeded in completing the missions which gave them greater vision in my capital and occasionally one of my other main cities which seems to indicate that the AI focuses on the players capital even when they aren't gaining anything from doing so because they can't do any other mission than gain vision even when the player is far from being the leader. The reason i ask is because the pattern of my recent games is, figure out who is going tourism and aim to kill them before they get 2 top tier tenents as that was the only way to counter a tourism victory as it was impossible to defend with my own culture or even rely on the other AI's massive culture output to delay the tourism runaway and the only other victory that was possibly to complete before or at the same time as tourism was conquest. After the tourism civ is dead i can then carry on with a normal game and go for the victory type i was aiming for.

The change to spying seems like a counter to that issue but if the other civs can't recognise the tourism runaway and quickly enough it will be left down to the player to counter the tourism victory again and mean we have to invest all or a large proportion of our spies into stealing tourism to prevent the tourism runaway as to get a net 15% reduction for a civs total tourism output each city will need a spy stealing tourism constantly and then if counter spying is actually improved this will be significantly less as spies might actually be caught. It would be nice to see the AI using all these wasted spies sitting in my capital helping stop the runaway tourism AI or at least gaining themselves some benefit elsewhere others wise spying is going to change (for the player) from the one-dimensional find a city to farm gold in as it is was far the best yield/mission to the one-dimensional camp all my spies in the tourism leaders cities and steal their tourism so i don't have to invade them like i usually have to.

Interested by the new spy leveling although disappointed that spies can't level up in city states still. Maybe let them level up but at a reduced rate as it is a 'safe' training zone.i.e. they can't be killed while doing it. Was also dissapointed that spies did not seem to level up doing missions to gain more vision in a city which again i could see would likely be OP in the old leveling system but if they are now going to get xp they could level up at a reduced rate.

While it may seem unrealistic, from a gameplay perspective it would be nice if we could see what missions were possible in a target city before sending a spy there, i seem to spend a lot of my spy game bouncing spies around AI cities trying to find a mission i can do or is worthwhile doing as a mission can only be undertaken by one spy at a time, apart from gain vision which gave no xp and from what i could tell gave no benefit to spying in the future (maybe i just missed that if it did?). Wondering if this might help the AI and be a reason why they all camp their spies in my capital...Does the AI think about moving spies one it goes to a city and finds it can't do anything but gain vision? Maybe if the AI could see there was no point sending a spy to a city it would send it more useful instead?
 
Using 2.2, unable to attack with bombers, the option is just not there. Would like to confirm if anyone else if having this problem before opening an issue.
i also experienced this, my cities were not in resistance. i didnt have logging enabled with a fresh install sadly.
 
Strange, started a new game as England and after first election rigging my spy promoted to Agent. In previous game I rigged about 15 election and got no promotion. Experience still 0/100.

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I thought it was that English spies perform as if they are 1 level higher than they actually are? So your recruits do missions as if they are agents, etc.

I think that's what G meant.
 
But they didn't, he was promoted just after he rigged this first election and in this new game, for 3 days I played another game where spy wasn't promoted at all.
Same results here through 100 turns as Lizzie. The first spy was sent to a CS accomplishing several rigs with no level, but the spy leveled up immediately after rigging a different CS. I wasn't watching the exp bar, so I'm unable to relay any clues at the moment.
 
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