New Version - April 20th (4/20)

[ridjack]

Pls open a ticket in GitHub and post a save file there, preferably with no other mods. I want to make sure this is a VP issue, not some other mod.

Honestly, if you're not seeing it then it almost certainly IS another mod. I use several.

 

[Moi Magnus]

I havnt played vox poli multiplayer in over a year. Last i heard barbarians were causing desyncs in multiplayer. This this an issue at all currently?

Yes, but less than before. I personnaly have desync every ~10 turns, but my MP game is from january version, and there was some improvement since then.

(Note that if one player has a bad connection, desync are FAR more frequent. We had a game with desync every 2 turns, and that not playable)

 

[raphaell666]

I havnt played vox poli multiplayer in over a year. Last i heard barbarians were causing desyncs in multiplayer. This this an issue at all currently?

Barbarians do not seem to be the issue causing desyncs at all anymore. We are still trying to figure out what causes them. It seems to be mostly random.

Yes, but less than before. I personnaly have desync every ~10 turns, but my MP game is from january version, and there was some improvement since then.

(Note that if one player has a bad connection, desync are FAR more frequent. We had a game with desync every 2 turns, and that not playable)

We are still not sure bad connection has anything to do with it. We are sometimes seeing desyncs literally every turn regardless of playing on LAN (ping <1 ms) or not. So far it seems completely random if your game will resync every turn or never at all. We are trying to figure it out though.

 

[ryanmusante]

We are still not sure bad connection has anything to do with it. We are sometimes seeing desyncs literally every turn regardless of playing on LAN (ping <1 ms) or not. So far it seems completely random if your game will resync every turn or never at all. We are trying to figure it out though.

I put blame the original development and losing vital team members between 2008 - 2010. They didn't focus as much on multiplayer and thus it was left in the state that it was even throughout the patch cycles and expansions. If it was to be isolated to a cause, could it be fixed or is it mostly hard coded?

 

[raphaell666]

I put blame the original development and losing vital team members between 2008 - 2010. They didn't focus as much on multiplayer and thus it was left in the state that it was even throughout the patch cycles and expansions. If it was to be isolated to a cause, could it be fixed or is it mostly hard coded?

We do not have access to the actual netcode (or how Civ5 communicates through the internet). There are some things that we are testing to try making the client work as synchronously as possible in all machines (i.e. avoiding possible causes of desyncs). I am still learning how this works myself, but I can already tell we are pretty limited in what we can do regarding this, unfortunately. @davenye at GitHub is the one who I believe has the most ideas and knowledge on this issue at the moment.

 

[Stalker0]

Small Size Perfect World Map. Emperor with Arabia on Standard Speed. CV won on Turn 290.

This game I decided to try out the Goddess of Beauty Stonehenge strategy that I've heard about. I looked it in, but while doing so Mongolia spread like a mad man throughout the continent. Within short order he had a dominant lead.

The vast majority of the game was near nonstop war with Mongolia. I was quite proud of myself this game. My horseman play was excellent, and I got many of my horses to level 8, a few even to level 10 (I think). I don't think I have ever gotten promotions that high before (queue the warmonger players' laughter!).

It was a slow and steady progress but eventually took down Mongolia and finally focused on my tradition CV strat.

America actually exploded out of nowhere jumped from the bottom of the pack to just under me as second in score. He tried a good push against me, but just couldn't crack the nut.

AT this point I was ready to settle in and get some really culturing done... that's when I realized my influential was already top notch with most players. Within a small measure of turns I just took home the gold.


Not too much to say on this game, just a few notes:

1) Letting someone's religion take you over is actually a good strat for CV play. The shared religion modifier can be hard to acquire.
2) The highlight of this game was pounding out 10k culture Great Writers with combinations of faith buying, natural production, and Arabia's bonus. I managed to grab 3 tenants in 12 turns.
3) Volunteer Army is actually a decent first pick if you have a strong culture civ and you need the help. At the time I got them, Fusiliers were the strongest unit out there, so getting strength 52 units on the board made quite a big difference.
4) Goddess of Beauty was fun with stonehenge, it got the job done.

 

[Vortok]

Anecdotal: Think I had a runaway Arabia (Difficulty 5, Continents) on another continent somehow explode on the tourism front, winning on 252 just as we were getting into Industrial (I had one tech + one I stole from them). Arabia started on another continent and seemed to have secured a solid lead in the early game. I wasn't particularly thinking (haven't played in a few months) and gave it (shared) Open Borders within maybe 20 turns of meeting. It was Influential to me before I even had a chance to not renew them (didn't think it was gonna skyrocket so fast, so didn't declare war to slow down the tourism, though it likely wouldn't have mattered).

I was trying Authority Huns (I rather liked the VP update to the Hunnic abilities/bonuses). I founded a religion and got the culture per follower Enhancer (Inspiration?). My social policies seemed to mostly keep pace with the non-Arabia civs, though maybe a tad behind (I'm not used to the heavy warmongering style - culture for kills 'n such). I didn't focus on guilds and popped my few Great Writers for culture rather than Great Works, but otherwise my infrastructure was fine. By the time I'd met Arabia I'd eliminated one civ and was out teching the remaining three on my continent.

I remember Cultural victory being nigh accidental a few times I played in the past, but not this fast. I remember Diplomatic victory was pushed back closer to when a Science victory is possible, so this seems... incredibly early?

Glancing at the Tourism screen, Arabia (at Turn 251) has produced 123,526(!) Culture, whereas the last holdout against their Tourism output has produced a mere 39,063 Culture (think I was around 33k, so lagging but not abysmal). My spy in Arabia's capital tells me that it was currently getting +79 Science/Culture from its trait, which seems kinda high.

I understand that part of this was just a case of a runaway civ, but I was pretty close to them in tech (6 policies behind, but expected when they produced -that- much culture). I kind of feel like there's too much tourism weighting towards incidental events and less on active focus of a civ (Archaeologists are a good example of needing to actively focus on it, like with the Diplomacy side of things). There's also less counterplay in comparison to Diplomacy. I'm not sure what the solution is, but something seems off with Cultural Victory mechanics/gameplay.

 

[Stalker0]

Anecdotal: Think I had a runaway Arabia (Difficulty 5, Continents) on another continent somehow explode on the tourism front, winning on 252 just as we were getting into Industrial (I had one tech + one I stole from them). Arabia started on another continent and seemed to have secured a solid lead in the early game. I wasn't particularly thinking (haven't played in a few months) and gave it (shared) Open Borders within maybe 20 turns of meeting. It was Influential to me before I even had a chance to not renew them (didn't think it was gonna skyrocket so fast, so didn't declare war to slow down the tourism, though it likely wouldn't have mattered).

I was trying Authority Huns (I rather liked the VP update to the Hunnic abilities/bonuses). I founded a religion and got the culture per follower Enhancer (Inspiration?). My social policies seemed to mostly keep pace with the non-Arabia civs, though maybe a tad behind (I'm not used to the heavy warmongering style - culture for kills 'n such). I didn't focus on guilds and popped my few Great Writers for culture rather than Great Works, but otherwise my infrastructure was fine. By the time I'd met Arabia I'd eliminated one civ and was out teching the remaining three on my continent.

I remember Cultural victory being nigh accidental a few times I played in the past, but not this fast. I remember Diplomatic victory was pushed back closer to when a Science victory is possible, so this seems... incredibly early?

Glancing at the Tourism screen, Arabia (at Turn 251) has produced 123,526(!) Culture, whereas the last holdout against their Tourism output has produced a mere 39,063 Culture (think I was around 33k, so lagging but not abysmal). My spy in Arabia's capital tells me that it was currently getting +79 Science/Culture from its trait, which seems kinda high.

I understand that part of this was just a case of a runaway civ, but I was pretty close to them in tech (6 policies behind, but expected when they produced -that- much culture). I kind of feel like there's too much tourism weighting towards incidental events and less on active focus of a civ (Archaeologists are a good example of needing to actively focus on it, like with the Diplomacy side of things). There's also less counterplay in comparison to Diplomacy. I'm not sure what the solution is, but something seems off with Cultural Victory mechanics/gameplay.

CV with arabia is very strong, anytime they are a runaway that is going to be a threat. As you mentioned, the Open borders was a mistake, and you may have to take a more active effort with your culture to head them off.

I do think there are some things to look at with CV, but we can't use a runaway Arabia as an example to say CV in general is a problem.

 

[ridjack]

CV with arabia is very strong, anytime they are a runaway that is going to be a threat. As you mentioned, the Open borders was a mistake, and you may have to take a more active effort with your culture to head them off.

I do think there are some things to look at with CV, but we can't use a runaway Arabia as an example to say CV in general is a problem.

I recently had pretty much the exact same sort of game as @Vortok, but with China in place of Arabia. I realize China is another notorious runaway civ, but CV is the only type of victory where you can run away that hard. In my case, there was pretty much literally nothing I could have done to stop her. I was unable to even know she existed for the first half of my game due simply to geography, and she was influential with around 3/4 of the civs when I finally did. I didn't provide her open borders, I sent out a navy ASAP (which would almost certainly have been ineffectual anyway due to her tech lead and my small supply cap) which didn't even arrive before she clinched it and in general did everything I could think of, but she was just too far gone.

CV seems to be in a weird spot where it often feels like there's no defense against it if you're not right next to them. You can keep your borders closed, try to increase culture and declare war to oust diplomats and prevent trade routes, but you're pretty much powerless otherwise and the victory can happen as fast as they can get an ideology. Science takes much longer and leaves you plenty of time to DoW, use world congress etc. Diplomatic victory requires you to wait until at least the Modern Era plus you can steal alliances, capture CS, have more time for DoW etc. Domination victory by definition requires them to get to you and lets you fight back.