New Version - January 22nd (1/22)

[Enrico Swagolo]

Don't like the removal of harbors from Pioneers and Conquistadors either, especially Conquistadors.

I must agree about the Conquistador part, mostly because Spain doesn't really deserve a nerf.

This change would be very fine though if some buff to Mission came. I wrote a bit about it in Spain thread today.


About AI, it seems that it's much improved from the last beta? Seems harder while the beta from IIRC 20th was about the same difficulty as version from ~14th. Good job.

 

[Gazebo]

I must agree about the Conquistador part, mostly because Spain doesn't really deserve a nerf.

This change would be very fine though if some buff to Mission came. I wrote a bit about it in Spain thread today.


About AI, it seems that it's much improved from the last beta? Seems harder while the beta from IIRC 20th was about the same difficulty as version from ~14th. Good job.

I spend so much time with autoplays and logs that I don't get a good feel for the version iteration in terms of improvement. What's it seem like the AI doing so differently? I'm genuinely curious.

G

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I spend so much time with autoplays and logs that I don't get a good feel for the version iteration in terms of improvement. What's it seem like the AI doing so differently? I'm genuinely curious.

G

To be honest I don't know, but they seem much better at teching. They seem less picky about wonders and more eager to build them, but that was since 14th to be honest. It could be very well just their Flavours randoming themselves better though.

Did you touch Barbarians? Those are the guys who seemed to have the biggest difference. They actually slowed me down now. Instead of just rushing the city and maybe getting one improvement on the way, they actually sometimes stood outside of the range waiting for me to potentially send my worker. Took me some time to send a warrior there.

...But then I doubt I did the right thing by making a conclusion so early - I've only played 22nd version once, it could be that they just got a great start or a bunch of coincidences.


I noticed a downgrade in AI though:

Barbarian controlled workers often just stand there? Is it because no valid camp is nearby? I noticed it usually happens when I can't see a camp anywhere near.

 

[Gazebo]

To be honest I don't know, but they seem much better at teching. They seem less picky about wonders and more eager to build them, but that was since 14th to be honest. It could be very well just their Flavours randoming themselves better though.

Did you touch Barbarians? Those are the guys who seemed to have the biggest difference. They actually slowed me down now. Instead of just rushing the city and maybe getting one improvement on the way, they actually sometimes stood outside of the range waiting for me to potentially send my worker. Took me some time to send a warrior there.

...But then I doubt I did the right thing by making a conclusion so early - I've only played 22nd version once, it could be that they just got a great start or a bunch of coincidences.


I noticed a downgrade in AI though:

Barbarian controlled workers often just stand there? Is it because no valid camp is nearby? I noticed it usually happens when I can't see a camp anywhere near.

Barb workers will sometimes wait for an escort, other times they'll flee.

Re: techs, the AI never actually looked at what grand strategy buildings/victory condition things were tied to which techs. They do now, and this should help their wonder selection quite a bit. Wonders also pass through the new valuation model, so they'll often get 'bumped up' to the choice spot if the city is a valid target (incidentally, the AI seems to spread out its wonders a bit more, which is good).

G

 

[nOxr]

Barb workers will sometimes wait for an escort, other times they'll flee.

Re: techs, the AI never actually looked at what grand strategy buildings/victory condition things were tied to which techs. They do now, and this should help their wonder selection quite a bit. Wonders also pass through the new valuation model, so they'll often get 'bumped up' to the choice spot if the city is a valid target (incidentally, the AI seems to spread out its wonders a bit more, which is good).

G

So, if you play with only one victory condition enbabled, say domination, will the AI now be more focused on military techs, buildings and wonders?

 

[Atlas627]

The changes may, well, change, we'll see how things go.

Absolutely, which is why I'm offering feedback. I'll play with it and give more later.

Wind Plant comes so late, it really needed something to make it a priority at that point. Also helps with late-game cost scaling.

Perhaps, but then the Hydro Plant is weaker by comparison, since you can only pick one or the other (and you actually cant build Wind Plants if you found the city on a river, right?)

Removal of Harbor from adv. settlers was an indirect buff for Carthage and Indonesia. It allows their UAs to have purpose into the Industrial Era.

So can you add it back to the Conquistador, then? Or is the Conquistador just acting as a Pioneer and it would be a pain to manually make the Conquistador unique?

Can't easily apply status effects via buildings to tiles (not without some significant rework of plot iterators for unit->improvement->building interaction).

Fair enough. So how'd you get the +1 movement cost thing to work?

You've had to step down two levels with this version of the CP, or in general?

Since you've made the recent AI changes. I didn't have to change anything from Vanilla IIRC.

Edit: Correction, going down the second level has made it too easy. So just one level for now.

 

[kaspergm]

The spreading-out of wonders definitely seems to work, I've seen that a lot in my last games. I also get the impression tech pathing is now different, they used to beeline Rifling something like 95 % of the times in my past games (exception being Maya), that doesn't seem to be quite as much the case now.

 

[Gazebo]

Absolutely, which is why I'm offering feedback. I'll play with it and give more later.



Perhaps, but then the Hydro Plant is weaker by comparison, since you can only pick one or the other (and you actually cant build Wind Plants if you found the city on a river, right?)



So can you add it back to the Conquistador, then? Or is the Conquistador just acting as a Pioneer and it would be a pain to manually make the Conquistador unique?



Fair enough. So how'd you get the +1 movement cost thing to work?



Since you've made the recent AI changes. I didn't have to change anything from Vanilla IIRC.

Edit: Correction, going down the second level has made it too easy. So just one level for now.

The '+1 movement cost thing' (I also have no better way to describe it (is an effect during the calculation of a units movement to a plot (so the effect is only called on movement). I could try to 'rewire' that to add some other effect, but the problem is that the +1 movement works for the AI via the pathfinder, whereas danger from, well, dangerous plots would require some tweaking. Not impossible, but that's the set of steps necessary.

Conquistador will be getting back its harbor, yep. Was an overthought change on my part.

Re: hydro, yeah, one or the other. Hydro needs a small buff, yep. Wind plant was buffed because settling off-river has a lot of drawbacks, so there needed to be an advantage to being on one. Speaking of which, I've considered adding a bonus city need reduction for poverty for being on coasts/rivers (as they're generally trade hubs) of around 10-15%. Might incentivize those plots a bit.

G

 

[Gazebo]

So, if you play with only one victory condition enbabled, say domination, will the AI now be more focused on military techs, buildings and wonders?

Yep!

G

 

[Atlas627]

The '+1 movement cost thing' (I also have no better way to describe it (is an effect during the calculation of a units movement to a plot (so the effect is only called on movement). I could try to 'rewire' that to add some other effect, but the problem is that the +1 movement works for the AI via the pathfinder, whereas danger from, well, dangerous plots would require some tweaking. Not impossible, but that's the set of steps necessary.

I see. Do they not (and do you not already plan on adding) such AI logic for Citadels?

Conquistador will be getting back its harbor, yep. Was an overthought change on my part.

Swell. Not a big deal, but it seems to be strictly more reasonable to let the Conquistador settling be useful when it does actually work.

Re: hydro, yeah, one or the other. Hydro needs a small buff, yep. Wind plant was buffed because settling off-river has a lot of drawbacks, so there needed to be an advantage to being on one. Speaking of which, I've considered adding a bonus city need reduction for poverty for being on coasts/rivers (as they're generally trade hubs) of around 10-15%. Might incentivize those plots a bit.

That sounds great to me. Personally, I think there's already not much incentive to settle on rivers. I'm down to try another boost!

 

[Gazebo]

I see. Do they not (and do you not already plan on adding) such AI logic for Citadels?

Swell. Not a big deal, but it seems to be strictly more reasonable to let the Conquistador settling be useful when it does actually work.



That sounds great to me. Personally, I think there's already not much incentive to settle on rivers. I'm down to try another boost!

Citadels are plot improvements. You're asking about plot checks for plots worked by a city based on a city's buildings. The latter is much different.

G

 

[Gazebo]

The spreading-out of wonders definitely seems to work, I've seen that a lot in my last games. I also get the impression tech pathing is now different, they used to beeline Rifling something like 95 % of the times in my past games (exception being Maya), that doesn't seem to be quite as much the case now.

Yeah, tech pathing takes into consideration the location of key buildings (wonders, regular buildings, etc.) that affect victory conditions in some way. Also flavors for grand strategies (i.e. conquerors want techs with flavor_offense, diplomats flavor_diplomacy, etc.).

G

 

[Gazebo]

Only the CP from "your range" of mods. I use a number of whowards other mods also plus some additional mods, but none of those have changed recently apart from a bit of XML code, and this issue is has come since about the time where you changed it so that bribing AI to DoW required a DoF between the two of you, so I think it seems likely the problem comes from that?

Test this: https://mega.nz/#F!2c8UUDQK!44DLtvHQRZcwyPFqcMBe8g

See if it works now.

G

 

[Atlas627]

Citadels are plot improvements. You're asking about plot checks for plots worked by a city based on a city's buildings. The latter is much different.

G

OH the movement cost is for all tiles being WORKED?!

That's significantly different. Also how does that work?? Doesn't just moving anywhere near a city make all the water tiles unworkable?

 

[supracseduch]

OH the movement cost is for all tiles being WORKED?!

That's significantly different. Also how does that work?? Doesn't just moving anywhere near a city make all the water tiles unworkable?

My guess is that it works for all water tiles within the city's borders, within the first three rings. It doesn't have to be worked by a citizen.

 

[kaspergm]

Test this: https://mega.nz/#F!2c8UUDQK!44DLtvHQRZcwyPFqcMBe8g

See if it works now.

G

Eh ... there isn't any LUA folder at all in this version, if I'm not mistaken?

 

[Mozzington]

Hi gents, I'm late to the party with this mod only having downloaded it last week. Since then I can't be without it. Do you just download the whole file again and overwrite existing install or do you need to delete older version first? Thanks.

 

[supracseduch]

Hi gents, I'm late to the party with this mod only having downloaded it last week. Since then I can't be without it. Do you just download the whole file again and overwrite existing install or do you need to delete older version first? Thanks.

I'm sure doing the latter is less prone to error. "Overwriting" folders really just replaces the older files within the folder with the newer files of the same title. But it's possible for the old folder to have files not present in the new folder, thus retaining those unnecessary files after the "overwriting" process.

 

[Necamijat]

Hi gents, I'm late to the party with this mod only having downloaded it last week. Since then I can't be without it. Do you just download the whole file again and overwrite existing install or do you need to delete older version first? Thanks.

The automatic installer seems to work as is, meaning you just fire it up and give it the correct data path, it does the rest itself.
As for the manual installs, removing the previous version is as said, less likely to cause errors.

 

[Gazebo]

Hi gents, I'm late to the party with this mod only having downloaded it last week. Since then I can't be without it. Do you just download the whole file again and overwrite existing install or do you need to delete older version first? Thanks.

Auto installer deletes all old files if they're named properly. I'd go ahead and clear out old ones to be safe though.