New Version - December 13th (12-13)

[Infixo]

Re: Trade Routes
It would also hit tall play more than wide. If you have not many citites, AIs will basically not trade with you. Where is balance in that?

I very much like that change for distance, longer more proftable, and more risky, like RL. Good. It already should make different targets a viable option. Maybe no need to artificially block choices.

I support changes that give player more choices (e.g. distance change), I don’t support changes that limit player choices.

 

[CrabHelmet]

@Gazebo - thank you so much for all your work on Morocco! The new UA looks absolutely amazing and I'm really excited to play it. Unfortunately I'm really busy until the weekend, but as a thanks for you going out of your way to fix it so well, I'll do a Morocco Deity playthrough for everyone as soon as I have the chance, to see how I can show off the new stuff.

 

[Gidoza]

The Trade Route thing....doesn't that have an impact on religion spread?

Correct me if I'm wrong but spamming routes into 1 city is a way to push a lot of religion into the city, so that is one thing that will change from this.

Also, it may limit how much trade is available early. Depending on the map if there aren't a lot of cities close by in the early game you can't do your full trade routes to foreign cities. But there is also internal routes so maybe that is not a big problem.

Its a very interesting change, we shall see!

Good point - perhaps the religion spread from TR should be buffed significantly because of this. If done right, it could become quite interesting.

 

[ElliotS]

Can plunder Trade Units connected to unowned cities without declaring war.

This seems too gamey in my view, considering that if it was an mp game, you'd declare war on anyone who did that. I like the thinking, and the creativity but I don't love it.

No big deal, just a general thought.

I think you're overestimating it. A caravan is 1-4 turns of production in one city depending on era. If you're not already planning on warring Morocco I think 90% of the time you'll just send trade routes to them to avoid the problem.

 

[Gazebo]

Re: trade route targeting. It is an abstraction, and I’ve tested diminishing returns before. It made it all very micro in an uninteresting way. So I scrapped that. This is better. Besides, big trade hubs can still send a bunch of routes and receive a bunch of routes (one from each civ). That’s more than fair.

G

 

[notque]

I think you're overestimating it. A caravan is 1-4 turns of production in one city depending on era. If you're not already planning on warring Morocco I think 90% of the time you'll just send trade routes to them to avoid the problem.

Trade routes have a very large difference in yields between them. That's potentially a massive yield sacrifice to send them only to Morocco. Let alone if it makes any fundamental sense based on the board situation.

If they are going to pillage trade routes inside other countries borders as well, they are impossible to counter without war. I don't think that's an overestimation at all.

 

[Infixo]

Another idea RE: trade routes.
1. Make them go faster, if possible. If I am to be forced to choose different TRs due to blocking, I would like at least to have a possibility to choose more often. Right know you’ll be stuck in like 30-40 turns with a trade route, and conditions might change. New destinations might be better. Make them e.g. 50% faster, then the player can choose destinations more often.
I wouldn’t want to relay on Marocco to plunder my TR just to be able to send it a different path...
2. Changing home city is taking the whole turn now, how about not? So, if a TR will end, I will check new options, change the home and send it wherever I want immediately. This will play along with more dynamics from point 1.

 

[notque]

What if they had a "neutral" uu that did the pillaging, and was treated like a barbarian to the AI? That way you could counter it with open borders, and killing the unit.

There has to be some sort of counter outside of war. Otherwise it's just instant war, and treat them like Barbarians with a leader attached to them, which just seems silly.

Pirates are killed if they are found, not just allowed to roam freely and pillage things. You should have to tactically sneak in and pillage, or find a spot to do so. That would also mean it would be trivial for them to do it in their territory, but much harder in others.

 

[Infixo]

Re: trade route targeting. It is an abstraction, and I’ve tested diminishing returns before. It made it all very micro in an uninteresting way. So I scrapped that. This is better. Besides, big trade hubs can still send a bunch of routes and receive a bunch of routes (one from each civ). That’s more than fair.
G

How is diminishing-approach much different from distance-adjusted-approach? Instead of 10 similar good routes you will end up with 10 different routes. Amount of micromanaging required will be the same.

Number of Civs in a given play is fixed. So, any mechanics that depends on it will not scale after some point. Sending routes is in my control, but receiving not. Same goes for Marocco - new UA will actually limit this Civ. They will always have no more than X partners, because there will be only X to trade with. To make it work - change it to different Cities that trade (and adjust benefits ofc). That way it will play nice with new TRs and will not be limited.

Btw, people complain about Venice, and Marocco will behave like V in a moment. Since all yields go to Capital, it will grow like crazy, especially with Tradition. In summary Marocco would be more balanced if a) yields go to actual cities that the trade is made with b) yields scale with num of cities.

 

[DarkZero]

Units

• Experience required for leveling units now scales with gamespeed

G, do you have a rough estimate of how effective this would be in reducing the human advantage in war on epic/marathon game speeds? I'd like to play a slower speed for more immersion and time spent in all eras, but I've been playing standard instead for the additional challenge.

Maybe a wonky breakdown, but in a nutshell, does this change (in theory; I guess we'll find out in due time through game play) reduce the meta of slower game speed = easier game enough so that the challenge of say standard and epic are pretty comparable?

Let me reply to you before your post gets lost, slower game speeds will always be easier, and while the xp change will certainly improve the experience there are 2 major issues that are almost impossible to be fixed, units,building techs and policies all take more time to build and get, but units move the same speed in all game speeds, this means that if it takes 10 turns to rech a dude and declare war on standard you probably got a tech on your way there, and so did he, meanwhile on marathon hes only halfway there on that tech, basicaly since tech aquisition is slower your curruten units obsolete slower and thus every time they are fighting they are worth way more tham on quicker speeds, thats a problem not easily solved.

And them there is the ai, while Gazeboo and team did the impossible to improve it, ai is still artificial, and what separates a human from the ai is the ability to think long term, the slower the game speed, the more the long term thinking is required, and unless we can come up whit a real human level inteligence ai, this issue will not even be solved.

 

[Gazebo]

Another idea RE: trade routes.
1. Make them go faster, if possible. If I am to be forced to choose different TRs due to blocking, I would like at least to have a possibility to choose more often. Right know you’ll be stuck in like 30-40 turns with a trade route, and conditions might change. New destinations might be better. Make them e.g. 50% faster, then the player can choose destinations more often.
I wouldn’t want to relay on Marocco to plunder my TR just to be able to send it a different path...
2. Changing home city is taking the whole turn now, how about not? So, if a TR will end, I will check new options, change the home and send it wherever I want immediately. This will play along with more dynamics from point 1.

1. This would imbalance TR yields for a lot of things, so no. Also increases micro. We have enough.

2. Again, micro of bouncing from city to city looking for yields. Not exciting. Also not AI friendly.

What if they had a "neutral" uu that did the pillaging, and was treated like a barbarian to the AI? That way you could counter it with open borders, and killing the unit.

There has to be some sort of counter outside of war. Otherwise it's just instant war, and treat them like Barbarians with a leader attached to them, which just seems silly.

Pirates are killed if they are found, not just allowed to roam freely and pillage things. You should have to tactically sneak in and pillage, or find a spot to do so. That would also mean it would be trivial for them to do it in their territory, but much harder in others.

I think you are overreacting to the impact of Morocco’s change.

How is diminishing-approach much different from distance-adjusted-approach? Instead of 10 similar good routes you will end up with 10 different routes. Amount of micromanaging required will be the same.

Number of Civs in a given play is fixed. So, any mechanics that depends on it will not scale after some point. Sending routes is in my control, but receiving not. Same goes for Marocco - new UA will actually limit this Civ. They will always have no more than X partners, because there will be only X to trade with. To make it work - change it to different Cities that trade (and adjust benefits ofc). That way it will play nice with new TRs and will not be limited.

Btw, people complain about Venice, and Marocco will behave like V in a moment. Since all yields go to Capital, it will grow like crazy, especially with Tradition. In summary Marocco would be more balanced if a) yields go to actual cities that the trade is made with b) yields scale with num of cities.

Difference is that diminishing returns is dynamic based on decisions you make at the moment relative to other routes. Deciding to send two routes to a city but changing the order so that one city gets more than the other, etc, becomes very tedious. It’s just not viable. The current change is fine.

The change doesn’t impact Morocco negatively. In fact forcing route diversity helps them, as they only need one route from someone to trigger their bonus, and the likelihood of targeting Morocco goes up because of the filter.

G

 

[Owlbebach]

• Cannot send trade routes to a foreign city if a trade route from a another owned city is already targeting that city
• These nerfs to TR power (which were, admittedly, getting a little too potent) limit the ability of a player to 'game' trade routes by piling them all on a safe, lucrative destination. Will also result in a broader spectrum of routes overall for all civs (variety is the spice of life!)

@Gazebo just one question: did you think about how devastating this change is for Portugal?

I'm very much against this idea. This is absolutely unnecessary feature. It does not create any diversity, it does not require interesting decisions, it is just a very unobvious mechanics that will only lead to frustration. Moreover it turns balance upside down because tall civs are screwed. It is a huge nerf to East Endia and a nerf to Caravanserais and Customs which were tier3 buildings already.

What was really needed is a small nerf to science and culture from TR.

 

[Tekamthi]

great update, thanks as always G and other contributors.

I wonder if the xp change couldn't be taken further.. can deity AI be given an xp boost? I imagine things this way: slower xp rate overall will result in less elite units -- this is good, and affects human playstyle way more than AI, but it will still make less AI elite units, too; deity AI xp boost might give AI a few more elite units, in particular on a difficulty where theres lots of spam and fodder for human xp farming.

 

[DarkZero]

@Gazebo just one question: did you think about how devastating this change is for Portugal?

I'm very much against this idea. This is absolutely unnecessary feature. It does not create any diversity, it does not require interesting decisions, it is just a very unobvious mechanics that will only lead to frustration. Moreover it turns balance upside down because tall civs are screwed. It is a huge nerf to East Endia and a nerf to Caravanserais and Customs which were tier3 buildings already.

What was really needed is a small nerf to science and culture from TR.

Not even that small nerf was necessary, science and culture from tr to others civs where fine and balanced, only the wields from tr to friendly and allied city states where off.

 

[Tekamthi]

I like the idea of encouraging diversity of TR somehow, but I'm concerned when on small continent with few trading partners. On a large well populated land mass, or islands in range of one, I imagine this will be fine, but it might make a remote location start even more challenging than it is already

 

[Gazebo]

@Gazebo just one question: did you think about how devastating this change is for Portugal?

I'm very much against this idea. This is absolutely unnecessary feature. It does not create any diversity, it does not require interesting decisions, it is just a very unobvious mechanics that will only lead to frustration. Moreover it turns balance upside down because tall civs are screwed. It is a huge nerf to East Endia and a nerf to Caravanserais and Customs which were tier3 buildings already.

What was really needed is a small nerf to science and culture from TR.

Just one question: do you realize that asking leading questions like that comes off very hostile?

Play, test, report back. I loathe armchair theory.

G

 

[tu_79]

1. Make them go faster, if possible. If I am to be forced to choose different TRs due to blocking, I would like at least to have a possibility to choose more often. Right know you’ll be stuck in like 30-40 turns with a trade route, and conditions might change. New destinations might be better. Make them e.g. 50% faster, then the player can choose destinations more often.

This is the case already. Shorter trade routes takes less time to complete. They could be made even shorter, though, I think the base travel time, which is added to the actual travel time, can be shortened, so distance makes a stronger impact on trade route duration.

2. Changing home city is taking the whole turn now, how about not? So, if a TR will end, I will check new options, change the home and send it wherever I want immediately. This will play along with more dynamics from point 1.

Why not?

I like the idea of encouraging diversity of TR somehow, but I'm concerned when on small continent with few trading partners. On a large well populated land mass, or islands in range of one, I imagine this will be fine, but it might make a remote location start even more challenging than it is already

Internal trade routes, then.

 

[notque]

I think you are overreacting to the impact of Morocco’s change.

Fair enough, I will play some games and develop an opinion through that.

 

[Workerspam]

I'm excited to try the new trade route mechanics. My trade game had devolved to all routes to allied CSs early and mid-game and all routes to sub-Influential major civs late game. Current Morocco game is the first time in ages I've diversified my trade routes and it's made for more interesting game play.

 

[Tekamthi]

Internal trade routes, then.

yeah i suppose that's fair; it seems to me that going all internal vs all foreign TRs though would almost always be a disadvantage, to compare two extremes... that said, I like that this scenario might just shift emphasis on exploring to find TR alternatives. I think, on balance, we finish ahead.