New Version - February 7th (2/7)

[Gazebo]

I’ve also noticed that the AI diplomatic behavior is quite erratic in this version. AIs seem too eager to make and break declarations of friendship, with no triggering incidents. I’ve had DoFs with no previous positive diplomatic modifiers, and DoFs with both a civ and their sworn enemy. Maybe there is some logic behind this, but it doesn’t seem natural. In previous versions, DoFs signified semi-stable, predictable coalitions, which are much less present currently.

I haven’t touched diplo AI for that kind of stuff in months, so I think we’re seeing a bit of observational bias.

G

 

[Txurce]

I haven’t touched diplo AI for that kind of stuff in months, so I think we’re seeing a bit of observational bias.

G

I think there's too much observation of DoF glut early on for bias to be much of a factor. (It's up enough for multiple people to view it as different, which is more than in prior patches.) In both games I've played, I've seen two civs be friends with everyone on the continent. DoF's are definitely up early on. However, they do taper off to more or less the standard as the game advances.

Speaking more anecdotally, the Mongols became my friend early in one game, then hoped my feelings wouldn't be hurt as they canceled a few turns later. Nothing seemed to change on the surface, but I realize there's a hidden game going on as well. For me the strange part was that I don't even recall ever seeing that message before.

Bottom line, though, I don't think there's a problem here. In fact, I think the AI is playing more the way a human would. Could some of the changes in AI logic have led to them being more calculated about the pros and cons of friendship?

 

[Mad Madigan]

How is playing with the Communitas map in VP? I've only tried the map once before and while the overall layout seemed very spread and good placement, I was thrown off by there being so much of one luxury resource to be shared between 2-3 continents, making trade with other closer nations difficult. What are reasons why you or others prefer thsi map type, in case I want to revisit it and try again?

I love the Communitas map, but it has its quirks to be sure.

Benefits:
- Even balance of terrain types (forests/jungles/marsh/etc.) with resource distribution adjusted to take into account the % of land of each type on the total map.
- Luxury resources are still distributed so that each Civ starts with enough nearby to create a monopoly with ~4-5 well-placed cities, with one "easy" monopoly per Civ. You'll have to conquer or settle aggressively for a 2nd+ monopoly (or be the Netherlands).
- Good terrain geography mix between the randomness of Fractal/Pangaea+ and the "earth-likeness" of Continents+ .
- Late game resources (oil, aluminum, and uranium) are coded to mostly appear in unwanted terrain tiles (flat desert, tundra, snow, etc.) so that as they become visible in the Modern and Atomic eras it makes certain less than ideal city settling location more desirable. This gives you an incentive to perhaps settle a few late-game cities to grab these resources, assuming the map isn't already completely settled by then.

Downsides:
- Too much landmass by default for the # of Civs at each map size. You either need to manually adjust your map settings to reduce the amount of land (by increasing ocean level or increasing the "width" of the ocean in between continents, or increase the # of Civs by about 2 per map size setting.
- Resource distribution (especially strategic resources) is actually a bit TOO good, so that you often end up with more than you need for a given map size. This is hard to easily adjust in the communitas map script as the # of strategic resources is handled by a slightly more complex script that normal maps, but it really needs to be toned down by about 20% or so. Just reducing the # of strategic resources per tile doesn't work as this will just cause there to be more yield nodes across the map. You have to go into the tables that control the # of total resources that spawn per tile type (# of Coal per Forested_Hill, etc.) and trim those numbers back.
- Certain luxuries are hard-coded by the script to appear only on certain terrain tile types. For example, Sugar spawns are automatically converted to marshes, Cocoa to jungle, etc. This messes with VP's luxury resource yield and monopoly bonus balance a little, but not too bad.

 

[Txurce]

I love the Communitas map, but it has its quirks to be sure.

- Too much landmass by default for the # of Civs at each map size. You either need to manually adjust your map settings to reduce the amount of land (by increasing ocean level or increasing the "width" of the ocean in between continents, or increase the # of Civs by about 2 per map size setting.

- Certain luxuries are hard-coded by the script to appear only on certain terrain tile types. For example, Sugar spawns are automatically converted to marshes, Cocoa to jungle, etc. This messes with VP's luxury resource yield and monopoly bonus balance a little, but not too bad.

I agree that there's sometimes too much land, making shallow water exploration too easy, and too beneficial for Carthage. I think I'll fiddle with that the next time I play.

I didn't realize that sugar spawning on marshes only happened on Communitas. But like you, it doesn't affect much in the big picture. Some luxuries are always better than others. It happened to me recently, and I just founded on top of each marsh.

 

[Gazebo]

I think there's too much observation of DoF glut early on for bias to be much of a factor. (It's up enough for multiple people to view it as different, which is more than in prior patches.) In both games I've played, I've seen two civs be friends with everyone on the continent. DoF's are definitely up early on. However, they do taper off to more or less the standard as the game advances.

Speaking more anecdotally, the Mongols became my friend early in one game, then hoped my feelings wouldn't be hurt as they canceled a few turns later. Nothing seemed to change on the surface, but I realize there's a hidden game going on as well. For me the strange part was that I don't even recall ever seeing that message before.

Bottom line, though, I don't think there's a problem here. In fact, I think the AI is playing more the way a human would. Could some of the changes in AI logic have led to them being more calculated about the pros and cons of friendship?

The DOF standard for the AI is pretty standard - I might bump the base up a bit to prevent crazy-early DOF chains.

G

 

[Y.O.]

Having tons of fun this version! Playing with Songhai for the first time since the culture from rivers was changed to production, and it's pretty much a powerhouse in terms of production. Quarries and mines by rivers are helping my cities pump out buildings and units (knights took 2 turns in cities with stable during a golden era). Also, how much was the espionage menu change? I seem to be noticing things I don't recall previously seeing in the tooltip.

 

[bigcat88]

This version is so cool. Ended one game - all was perfect.

 

[tu_79]

This version is so cool. Ended one game - all was perfect.

Yep. It seems we'll need to play a long time to find something worth changing.

 

[Deadstarre]

something new, barbarians are entering my territory and raiding capital at turn 10 and sooner. I thought there was a minimum amount of turns before they enter your territory?

 

[BiteInTheMark]

something new, barbarians are entering my territory and raiding capital at turn 10 and sooner. I thought there was a minimum amount of turns before they enter your territory?

Sometimes its bugged and dont work. Once I had 4 barbarian raids of my cities before 14 turns. In this case, either you try to rush warrior or restart the map at initial turn.

 

[Deadstarre]

something else i'm seeing is Haile going tradition into progress. I thought it was a fluke, but in my current game Harun al Rashid is doing the exact same thing.

I know they are on a rating based system and their math decided this was the right move, but I sincerely doubt the assessment is ultimately in their best interests. to avoid this, should they even be allowed to consider picking 2x ancient policies?

 

[Bridger]

I love the Communitas map, but it has its quirks to be sure.

Benefits:
- Even balance of terrain types (forests/jungles/marsh/etc.) with resource distribution adjusted to take into account the % of land of each type on the total map.
- Luxury resources are still distributed so that each Civ starts with enough nearby to create a monopoly with ~4-5 well-placed cities, with one "easy" monopoly per Civ. You'll have to conquer or settle aggressively for a 2nd+ monopoly (or be the Netherlands).
- Good terrain geography mix between the randomness of Fractal/Pangaea+ and the "earth-likeness" of Continents+ .
- Late game resources (oil, aluminum, and uranium) are coded to mostly appear in unwanted terrain tiles (flat desert, tundra, snow, etc.) so that as they become visible in the Modern and Atomic eras it makes certain less than ideal city settling location more desirable. This gives you an incentive to perhaps settle a few late-game cities to grab these resources, assuming the map isn't already completely settled by then.

Downsides:
- Too much landmass by default for the # of Civs at each map size. You either need to manually adjust your map settings to reduce the amount of land (by increasing ocean level or increasing the "width" of the ocean in between continents, or increase the # of Civs by about 2 per map size setting.
- Resource distribution (especially strategic resources) is actually a bit TOO good, so that you often end up with more than you need for a given map size. This is hard to easily adjust in the communitas map script as the # of strategic resources is handled by a slightly more complex script that normal maps, but it really needs to be toned down by about 20% or so. Just reducing the # of strategic resources per tile doesn't work as this will just cause there to be more yield nodes across the map. You have to go into the tables that control the # of total resources that spawn per tile type (# of Coal per Forested_Hill, etc.) and trim those numbers back.
- Certain luxuries are hard-coded by the script to appear only on certain terrain tile types. For example, Sugar spawns are automatically converted to marshes, Cocoa to jungle, etc. This messes with VP's luxury resource yield and monopoly bonus balance a little, but not too bad.

Interesting. I play exclusively on Standard map size with Terra enabled (all civs start on largest contienent) and I noticed that almost *no* luxuries spawn on the other continent. That's the main downside I had while playing, as most of the downsides you list are mitigated by the Terra start (it seems to have *just* the right amount of land and strategic resources for the number of players).

 

[Gazebo]

something else i'm seeing is Haile going tradition into progress. I thought it was a fluke, but in my current game Harun al Rashid is doing the exact same thing.

I know they are on a rating based system and their math decided this was the right move, but I sincerely doubt the assessment is ultimately in their best interests. to avoid this, should they even be allowed to consider picking 2x ancient policies?

I’ve seen it rarely, but it often works well when they pick it.

If you are playing on a difficulty below Immortal the AI chooses from the top 2 branches when opening a new branch. Probably RNG.

G

 

[Mad Madigan]

Interesting. I play exclusively on Standard map size with Terra enabled (all civs start on largest contienent) and I noticed that almost *no* luxuries spawn on the other continent. That's the main downside I had while playing, as most of the downsides you list are mitigated by the Terra start (it seems to have *just* the right amount of land and strategic resources for the number of players).

Using the 'terra' option for Communitas is a mixed blessing. You're right that it makes strategic resources more balanced (since an appropriate % of the strategic resources will be on the "new world" continent(s) for Civs to fight over in the late game), but the reason for the luxury shortage is because of how Communitas assigns luxuries to tiles. Each Civ is essentially given a primary luxury that will spawn within a certain radius of their first settler. This way each Civ should be able to get at least one monopoly just by settling 4-5 cities. Each Civ is also given a secondary luxury that spawns within 2 tiles of their first settler, and this luxury is picked randomly so it could be anything (save that it cannot be the same as the primary luxury. Once all of the Civs get their luxuries the CSs are each given 1 luxury from whatever is left over, or are given porcelain/jewelry. For the 'terra' setup the "new world" continent only gets sparse random luxuries, similar to the luxuries that show up on the random small islands in between the continents. So the density of the luxuries is much less on the new continent than the starting one, but strategic resources should be just as or more dense.

I prefer the standard Civ placement, personally, but I also modify the strategic resource yields so that there is about 20-30% less iron/horses/coal/oil on the map. Communitas already makes Aluminum and Uranium rare, so I leave those as-is.

 

[Nomad4]

Using the 'terra' option for Communitas is a mixed blessing. You're right that it makes strategic resources more balanced (since an appropriate % of the strategic resources will be on the "new world" continent(s) for Civs to fight over in the late game), but the reason for the luxury shortage is because of how Communitas assigns luxuries to tiles. Each Civ is essentially given a primary luxury that will spawn within a certain radius of their first settler. This way each Civ should be able to get at least one monopoly just by settling 4-5 cities. Each Civ is also given a secondary luxury that spawns within 2 tiles of their first settler, and this luxury is picked randomly so it could be anything (save that it cannot be the same as the primary luxury. Once all of the Civs get their luxuries the CSs are each given 1 luxury from whatever is left over, or are given porcelain/jewelry. For the 'terra' setup the "new world" continent only gets sparse random luxuries, similar to the luxuries that show up on the random small islands in between the continents. So the density of the luxuries is much less on the new continent than the starting one, but strategic resources should be just as or more dense.

I prefer the standard Civ placement, personally, but I also modify the strategic resource yields so that there is about 20-30% less iron/horses/coal/oil on the map. Communitas already makes Aluminum and Uranium rare, so I leave those as-is.

For those of us that are not as technically inclined, what are those changes / where are they made?

 

[Mad Madigan]

For those of us that are not as technically inclined, what are those changes / where are they made?

I can open up the communitas map script later this evening and point out the sections related to strategic and luxury resource placement and amounts, but if you want to jump in the map script is fairly well commented.

The thing about strategic resources is that you have to take into account the total # of resources for the entire map (Ex: ~250 iron should exist on the map at Standard size), the size of each resource deposit (Ex: Large Iron deposits give 6 iron, Small Iron deposits give 2), the types of tiles resources are allowed to spawn on, and the density of resource deposits (Ex: No Iron deposit can spawn within X tiles of another Iron deposit). If you lower the total # of resource that are spawned too much without also lowering the # of resources per tile you will make strategic resources too sparse.

More specifically, there is a section of the communitas script that specifies how much of each resource should spawn per type of tile. So, for example, for flat desert tiles it lists what resources (and how many) can spawn. It is those values that I lowered by about 20-30% for iron, horses, coal, and oil. Then I reduced the max resources that can spawn on a large deposit by 1 for each of those resources. So instead of ~250 coal spawning on a Standard size map with large deposits giving 8 Coal, in my version only ~200 total coal spawns with 7 Coal available from each large deposit. That is for the "Standard" resource setting, though. You can also control how much more or fewer resources spawn when "Scarce", "Abundant" or "Strategic Balance" is selected.

I made a table of all of the default Communitas resource yields per tile type if anyone is curious to see it. I can post that later if anyone would like to see how Communitas compares to a "default" Civ 5 map script.

 

[Txurce]

I can open up the communitas map script later this evening and point out the sections related to strategic and luxury resource placement and amounts, but if you want to jump in the map script is fairly well commented.

The thing about strategic resources is that you have to take into account the total # of resources for the entire map (Ex: ~250 iron should exist on the map at Standard size), the size of each resource deposit (Ex: Large Iron deposits give 6 iron, Small Iron deposits give 2), the types of tiles resources are allowed to spawn on, and the density of resource deposits (Ex: No Iron deposit can spawn within X tiles of another Iron deposit). If you lower the total # of resource that are spawned too much without also lowering the # of resources per tile you will make strategic resources too sparse.

More specifically, there is a section of the communitas script that specifies how much of each resource should spawn per type of tile. So, for example, for flat desert tiles it lists what resources (and how many) can spawn. It is those values that I lowered by about 20-30% for iron, horses, coal, and oil. Then I reduced the max resources that can spawn on a large deposit by 1 for each of those resources. So instead of ~250 coal spawning on a Standard size map with large deposits giving 8 Coal, in my version only ~200 total coal spawns with 7 Coal available from each large deposit. That is for the "Standard" resource setting, though. You can also control how much more or fewer resources spawn when "Scarce", "Abundant" or "Strategic Balance" is selected.

I made a table of all of the default Communitas resource yields per tile type if anyone is curious to see it. I can post that later if anyone would like to see how Communitas compares to a "default" Civ 5 map script.

That'd be great.

I assume you're saying "scarce" is more harsh than your reductions?

I've never messed with the maps because I'm perfectly happy with it, but I am curious as to what less land and less reources (more like Continents) would be like.

 

[Txurce]

Another anecdote: Denmark denounced me two turns after asking to become friends (I accepted), on t110.

 

[void_genesis]

Something odd in my most recent game. I got three different AI that were leading get peaceful voluntary vassalage with the remaining four weaker AI, all within a few turns of each other. Is this intended?

 

[Moi Magnus]

Something odd in my most recent game. I got three different AI that were leading get peaceful voluntary vassalage with the remaining four weaker AI, all within a few turns of each other. Is this intended?

It's been a long list of "weird diplomatic actions" reported for this version, so there MAY br a bug, but without any log from the diplomatic AI there is nothing to work on...