New Version - February 7th (2/7)

[glider1]

This version is very good, but multiple people have complained early on about the AI being overly friendly. I personally find that a major problem, and hope it will be fixed in the next version.

Are you sure it is not a mod doing it? I just read through the forum for "Unique City States" and there is mention of changes to diplomacy in it.

 

[Questdog]

Are you sure it is not a mod doing it? I just read through the forum for "Unique City States" and there is mention of changes to diplomacy in it.

I am not using this mod and every game every AI and me all end up with DoF's very early on.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Questdog, try manually selecting some more aggresive civs, like the Zulus or Aztecs.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Questdog, try manually selecting some more aggresive civs, like the Zulus or Aztecs.

Playing with aggressive civs every game isn’t exactly a solution.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I know, but I think it's a temporary solution until this is hopefully resolved. Also, you can still decline DoFs and, after you have a few friends, do some strategic denouncing of your own of the runaways etc. to try to shake things up.

 

[Questdog]

Questdog, try manually selecting some more aggresive civs, like the Zulus or Aztecs.

Shaka and Attilla and Monty have all DoF'd me. It is only in the early game. By the Medieval Era, everyone denounces me.... The game I am in now, I eliminated Japan very early because Kyoto was only 10 tiles or so away and they settled a city between us on a super great spot. Nobody cared about that in the least and continued to renew their DoF's. Now I am in the Renaissance Era and Monty and Rome are loving each other (though neither is doing very well) and the rest of world is against them and all 8 of the other civs have DP's with one another. It is a Marathon/Huge game with 12 civs (11 now). Byzantium and Indonesia are inter-settled with one another and are close as thieves and are the tech leaders. Theodra only has 5 cities. Everybody hates me, though Monty and Rome have yet to denounce me, but they are not offering me good prices on my goods. Since eliminating Japan, the only wars I have fought have been declared on me. I have no warmonger penalty with anyone. Sweden took out Denmark and turned him into a 1-city vassal, but he is still in tight with the Indonesia-led faction. Sweden keeps warring with me whenever the peace treaty runs out and Indonesia and Byzantium attack me when I am at peace with Sweden. By the way, Sweden is at like -35 happiness and is losing money hand-over-fist, but his units never stop coming.....I have never seen so many knights in one spot before..... I was hoping to cripple him before his UU comes a-callin', but that is not going to happen.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Questdog, that's an interesting game! I hope you'll do a report/summary of the game and post it on the strategic balance subforum.

Btw, I already gave the logs of my weird-AI-diplomatic-behaviour game to Gazebo, maybe you could do it to with this current game or one of the following ones.

It's interesting though, in my games on this patch I have never NOT been DoW'd in the first 60 turns by at least TWO of the warmongers, with the first DoF for me coming not sooner than turn 140-ish.

 

[Questdog]

Questdog, that's an interesting game! I hope you'll do a report/summary of the game and post it on the strategic balance subforum.

Btw, I already gave the logs of my weird-AI-diplomatic-behaviour game to Gazebo, maybe you could do it to with this current game or one of the following ones.

It's interesting though, in my games on this patch I have never NOT been DoW'd in the first 60 turns by at least TWO of the warmongers, with the first DoF for me coming not sooner than turn 140-ish.

Well, I have not been keeping notes, so to do a write-up would not be an option. But I have been wanting to see some marathon/huge write-ups, so maybe I will try it for my next game.

Are you playing with any mods? I play with a bunch of mods, but the only one that changes game-play other than VP is the Enlightenment Era, which I am just hitting now. And literally every game is a DoF-fest at the beginning.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

No, I'm usually playing without any additional mods. I'm waiting for the VP to come to completion and for other mods to catch-up, and then I'll probably play with more mods. There's so many great ones, including some tailored to the VP, so I'm looking forward to that. The EE mod is certainly one of the more intriguing ones.

Great, I really hope you'll do a write-up, they're usually great to read (even though I imagine they take a lot of time to write).

 

[Omincron]

I'm in my 2nd game on this version. It does seem like the AIs DoF more... I'm not of the opinion that this is really bad as there is also plenty of war between them so, if anything, the diplomatic situation is a bit more dynamic and realistic.

However, if this is going to be the norm, I would like to see the AI penalized more for breaking a DoF with a war. When the player does this, almost all the AIs go instant hate on me but I don't see any/much repercussion between the AIs when they decide to make war a few turns after agreeing to be someon's friend.

I'm not complaining that they do it, it adds a nice realistic backstabbing risk which can be a nice challenge. I'd just like to see other AIs relations to the backstabber drop more than they seem to currently.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

@Gazebo , here are the logs and the save file for a recent game. I was at war with Montezuma and we were fighting it out over Mombasa. Every few turns he'd use his navy to take Mombasa, and I'd use my land forces to liberate it. If I read the game correctly, his triremes didn't get destroyed whenever I recaptured Mombasa and immediately liberated it, but rather any trireme stationed in the city got "ejected" just outside the city borders. I'm not sure if that's the intended mechanic or not, but just wanted to point out. It happened on this very turn from which the logs/savegame are.

 

[ElliotS]

So I'm in the middle of my current Maya game, and I just want to say how awesome this patch is. Going deep into the mid-game there are 4 real competitors for victory, with Denmark as an outside chance. (He's being too peaceful and falling behind though.)

Myself, The Ottomans, Korea and one more on top. The most surprising however is the powerful Celts in 1st place. I've been busy with my continent, but Celts are 1 or 2 techs behind the leaders (me and Korea) way up there in policies and have a ton of score.

They're threatening Diplomacy, Korea is threatening science and culture and Ottomans just got shanked by me to reduce their annoying religious pressure and power, but were/are threatening science at least.

The game has felt very even all game, I love it!

 

[Basilius]

Want to add another story to the pile and say that this version feels very fun and balanced.

I'm at 1985 in my current warlord game (random victory condition), so haven't quite won yet, but I want to recount how my opponents worked together to hinder my lead and potentially lock me out of the game. I was Greece going for diplomacy (CS alliances) and gold (trade routes) to transition over once the victory condition was revealed. Things were going well until the first world congress, when the entire world became alert to my dominance.

Immediately all other nations on earth declared war on me. This was not to attack my land, but destroy all my trade routes (went from 15 to 2), attack my CS allies (through conquering or diplomats), and push anti-Greek proposals in the world congress (open door policies, sanctioning me, decolonization, etc.). This forced me to use all my delegates at being reactive, rather than proactive.

This went on for quite a long time, but eventually I made peace with all the nations and am getting my trade routes back online. My CS alliances are half of what they were, yet still robust. I am still leading the game though by a much smaller margin. I have constant spy activity against me and no one will trade with me or allow embassies/open borders. Nukes are just being developed, which is making me very, very nervous (I only have 5 cities).

Science was revealed to be the victory con and immediately "space regulations" was proposed at world congress. I still anticipate I will win but the AI really came together to hinder me, and I'll report back if anything remarkable happens from here on out. I just think I'm too far ahead for another civ to beat me, unless my capital gets nuked (could totally happen).

 

[Rafs]

I'd also like to chip in to say that the AI seems overly friendly, everyone is DoFing everyone, and while that's nice, it creates odd situations, as soon as there is an outlier or someone gets on the bad side of one the AIs, one of the AIs will denounce, and the rest will most likely follow their example (because you know how denouncing goes), so you end up denounced by all the AIs. After this it's almost always war after war for me, doesn't matter if I'm playing peaceful or aggressive. The games I tested were on huge / highland maps, so maybe its because everyone has space that they are friendly? I don't know the reason, but it feels very weird to me.
Everything else is looking good right now, though I admit I'm looking forward to the next patch to help a bit with tundras, ever since the (justified) downgrade of the herbalist tundra starts have been rough.

 

[ElliotS]

@Gazebo I was going to bring up a discussion, but I wanted to get the facts straight first.

It seems like there are very few AI that go for domination victories going into the late game. Do AI know they're getting edged out of other victories and know to declare war? Is there a problem with civs like Denmark becoming really friendly later?

 

[tu_79]

@Gazebo I was going to bring up a discussion, but I wanted to get the facts straight first.

It seems like there are very few AI that go for domination victories going into the late game. Do AI know they're getting edged out of other victories and know to declare war? Is there a problem with civs like Denmark becoming really friendly later?

In my game, Denmark is using the opportunity that I'm at war with Morocco, the current leader, to take some Moroccan cities.

Date is 1921.

 

[Gazebo]

@Gazebo I was going to bring up a discussion, but I wanted to get the facts straight first.

It seems like there are very few AI that go for domination victories going into the late game. Do AI know they're getting edged out of other victories and know to declare war? Is there a problem with civs like Denmark becoming really friendly later?

It depends! The short answer is that, the longer a game goes, the less likely a civ is to attempt domination if they feel they are too far behind in their efforts - other VCs, like science, become more tempting. If you want to spoil your game, you can look at the grandstrategyAI log to see preferences.

G

 

[ashendashin]

It depends! The short answer is that, the longer a game goes, the less likely a civ is to attempt domination if they feel they are too far behind in their efforts - other VCs, like science, become more tempting. If you want to spoil your game, you can look at the grandstrategyAI log to see preferences.

G

Wait what? If a civ already went down the warmonger policies then domination would be the quickest way to catch up to anything. The sheer amount of gold from taking cities with Imperialism is a big reason to go crazy aggressive the farther the game goes...

 

[Gazebo]

Wait what? If a civ already went down the warmonger policies then domination would be the quickest way to catch up to anything. The sheer amount of gold from taking cities with Imperialism is a big reason to go crazy aggressive the farther the game goes...

They'll continue to be aggressive, but domination is time-consuming. If they fear that they can't get all the capitals before someone else wins, they'll shift gears.

G

 

[Txurce]

Wait what? If a civ already went down the warmonger policies then domination would be the quickest way to catch up to anything. The sheer amount of gold from taking cities with Imperialism is a big reason to go crazy aggressive the farther the game goes...

Gazebo's saying it's a bad idea no matter your investment, once that investment fails miserably. At that point, another VC may have higher odds than Domination for you (crappy as those odds might be).