New Version - October 9th (10/9)

[Ziad]

If diplomacy is naturally oriented towards expansion (which it is, I agree), why is it's medieval tree the most tall focused of them all? I still don't get it. I'd understand Artistry being a be-this-tall-to-ride rollercoaster, but why Statecraft?

Balance?

If you play a small empire, you can take Statecraft to support your diplomatic relations, whether or not you are going for a diplomatic victory. If you don't, you'll have some trouble maintaining them.

If you play a larger empire, you already gain many benefits. You get more diplomatic buildings (so more paper) which scale heavily with CS for some insane per-city yields. More faith output is more religious spread. More spread is more religious authority and more likelihood to pass World Religion resolution. You can fulfill more quests (such as the faith/culture/conquest) ones.

If you were to make Statecraft more friendly for wide play rather than tall, you make it much more difficult to win a diplomatic victory as tall while making it much easier as wide.

Ultimately it's an argument between synergy and support. Just because two paths fulfill the same function, doesn't necessarily mean they need to complement each other perfectly. In fact that's where variation in approaches comes from.

 

[Gazebo]

Is something wrong with CS trade values? I'm sending a caravan to an ally CS (cultural, but that has no impact), and it provides me 16 (!!!) Culture and like 8 Science. Is everything all right on that front?
Besides that nice changes. I feel Sweden might've gotten too much and one of the CS bonuses should go back to their previous form, but it's a first glance impression. By the way, am I the only one who always goes Industry in renaissance?



If diplomacy is naturally oriented towards expansion (which it is, I agree), why is it's medieval tree the most tall focused of them all? I still don't get it. I'd understand Artistry being a be-this-tall-to-ride rollercoaster, but why Statecraft?

I don't necessarily see Statecraft as being so tall-oriented. Keep in mind that, with CSD, Chanceries/Wire-Services scale very well wide, and Statecraft helps you secure those CS alliances. I think it allows civs like Austria (who do better Tall) to play the Diplo game, whereas a civ without Statecraft can do diplo if it goes wide.

G

 

[neo_arcadia]

It's not as simple as you make it or to be.

Larger empires have better gold and faith outputs, both of which could be used to fuel science and culture victories.

From my experience even your large gold and faith still not enough to mitigate the effect of science and culture requirement. Small empire may not have that huge amount of money but they also need much lower science and culture to advance to the next technology and social policy.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Okay, it wasn't just that one CS, all allied CSs give 16 Culture when traded with. Is that value intentional? It seems very high, it's like 4-8 times higher than pre-patch.

 

[Gazebo]

Okay, it wasn't just that one CS, all allied CSs give 16 Culture when traded with. Is that value intentional? It seems very high, it's like 4-8 times higher than pre-patch.

I sliced the culture from TR divisor to 25 (from 50). I didn't see any balance issues arising from this, however I'll keep an eye on it.

G

 

[randomnub]

I think they give less science than before though? In the Renaissance I have to pick between 16 culture and 4 science or ~20 science by trading with the science leaders, choices are good.

 

[Txurce]

If you were to make Statecraft more friendly for wide play rather than tall, you make it much more difficult to win a diplomatic victory as tall while making it much easier as wide.

Ultimately it's an argument between synergy and support. Just because two paths fulfill the same function, doesn't necessarily mean they need to complement each other perfectly. In fact that's where variation in approaches comes from.

I don't necessarily see Statecraft as being so tall-oriented. Keep in mind that, with CSD, Chanceries/Wire-Services scale very well wide, and Statecraft helps you secure those CS alliances. I think it allows civs like Austria (who do better Tall) to play the Diplo game, whereas a civ without Statecraft can do diplo if it goes wide.

I play Statecraft a lot, and agree with both of you that it is not exclusively favorable to going wide. Like Artistry, it's a good balancer for small civs, even if you aren't going for a DV or CV.

On a separate note, I'm really looking forward to the new health buffs for coastal cities. In my own, usually navy-centered games, picking off those island cities had turned into a racket.

Finally, all these changes seem very well considered, regardless of whether they stick.

 

[Blue Ghost]

With yields from CS trade routes so high, doesn’t that obviate the advantages of tourism, namely better trade route yields? It’s a lot easier to ally a city-state than to become influential over a civ.

 

[Gazebo]

Hotfix, savegame compatible: https://mega.nz/#!HZMnQCoJ!Ymh9e5hgyWrrJ3vdmsTxecNXDIItLGQljOKS5ofbPYY

G

 

[Owlbebach]

Keep in mind that the trade off for puppets v. annexed cities is that you get to control building construction (and construct units), both of which allow you to compensate for the governor AI.

Thing is ability to choose what to construct can't compensate it. Too many buildings are lost when city gets conqured. And even if buildings stay - here is a simple maths: if you annex a city - you get 40% bonus science and culture from that city, but it reduces science and culture of all of your cities. It means that starting from a certain number of cities puppeting will always be better, the exact number of cities depends on a map size

 

[RAuer2]

I dunno. I prefer annex over puppet. Well, I usually raze/plant new city instead of annex, but I think the end result is essentially the same.

I see great benefit in controlling more space, denying that space to any of the AIs, resource monopolies, a much higher supply cap, and so on. However, I do not play on your difficulty so our different viewpoints could be related to that.

 

[pineappledan]

Arabia

• UA - added +2 Gold to GP bonus
  • Early science and culture can snowball, and +2 s/c is simply too much. Adding Gold helps Arabia sustain a slightly larger economy in the early game

Okay so what are the values for Arabia's UA now? This bullet point implies science and culture were reduced, so is it +1sci/+1cul/+2gold per historical event now?

 

[Ziad]

Thing is ability to choose what to construct can't compensate it. Too many buildings are lost when city gets conqured. And even if buildings stay - here is a simple maths: if you annex a city - you get 40% bonus science and culture from that city, but it reduces science and culture of all of your cities. It means that starting from a starting with a certain number of cities puppeting will always be better, the exact number of cities depends on a map size

Well no it doesn't reduce your city outputs. It just increases the amounts you would need from all cities to compensate.

Annexing a city is still less costly than founding one on your own, as you already have a base population, some buildings, and border growth. It's no different from founding a city except for the need of a courthouse.

In most cases, it is better to puppet a city and let it establish some infrastructure rather than annexing it immediately. The only times you want to annex immediately is if you want to use the city to purchase units for defensive/offensive purposes, or buy tiles to grab valuable resources before the AI has a chance to get them.

The fact is, puppeting should always be immediately better from a yields standpoint. Otherwise why would you ever puppet?

Even if you were to reduce the penalty, the logic would remain the same.

 

[CrazyG]

The culture from trade routes seems kind of high to me. Why even run internal routes? Also trade routes don't scale with city number so it really favors either going tall or puppeting your other cities.

This is why I think the high city expansion costs are a problem. The amount of culture you can gain from sources that don't scale with city number is so large, why would I want to reduce that number? I'll happily take some puppets because I have spare happiness, but its a big deal to reduce your culture and science by settling.

 

[ElliotS]

I like this idea, however if Authority was to receive such an exception, shouldn't Statecraft and whatever else that becomes null with certain features missing have similar compensatory conditions?

I don't know of any other situations that would be comparable. What nullifies statecraft?

We'll keep an eye on expansion costs. Keep in mind that the trade off for puppets v. annexed cities is that you get to control building construction (and construct units), both of which allow you to compensate for the governor AI. The fact that expansion hurts culture and science (possibly making them science/culture negative in the end) is not necessarily a problem. Science civs should lean towards being smaller, and culture civs similarly. Diplo and conquest are more naturally oriented towards expansion.

G

The control isn't worth it though. I agree with your premise, but the values make annexing almost never worth it. Hyperbolic example to show my point: It's like if there was a choice between 2 GPT per city or a lump sum of 100,00 gold, and you claimed that the 2 GPT was better in the long run but worse right away.

The whole idea isn't bad, but the values are very off imo.

Thing is ability to choose what to construct can't compensate it. Too many buildings are lost when city gets conqured. And even if buildings stay - here is a simple maths: if you annex a city - you get 40% bonus science and culture from that city, but it reduces science and culture of all of your cities. It means that starting from a starting with a certain number of cities puppeting will always be better, the exact number of cities depends on a map size

To be clear, you do know that the percent increase is additive and not multiplicative, right? That means at a value of 5% cities would almost always be culturally/scientifically positive, whether it was your first or your 100th.

The question is what % leads to a net benefit per city, but doesn't allow insane snowballing. If each city past around the 8th provides an increase of approximately 6% culture and 8% science, (On the base costs the increase modifies, not on your empire-wide totals) the culture and science reduction per city should be 5% and 7% respectively imo.

That means that founded or annexed cities will provide most of their benefit in extra production, supply cap and gold. Meanwhile puppets will provide most of their benefit in science, culture and gold.

Currently I feel like that cities past the first few provide about 6% culture and 8% science, but increase costs by 13% and 12%. This disparity makes them totally non-viable in most cases. Even if you're seeking production and gold, having every city add a 7 and 4 percent penalty to culture and science absolutely kills the idea.

 

[Gazebo]

I don't know of any other situations that would be comparable. What nullifies statecraft?


The control isn't worth it though. I agree with your premise, but the values make annexing almost never worth it. Hyperbolic example to show my point: It's like if there was a choice between 2 GPT per city or a lump sum of 100,00 gold, and you claimed that the 2 GPT was better in the long run but worse right away.

The whole idea isn't bad, but the values are very off imo.



To be clear, you do know that the percent increase is additive and not multiplicative, right? That means at a value of 5% cities would almost always be culturally/scientifically positive, whether it was your first or your 100th.

The question is what % leads to a net benefit per city, but doesn't allow insane snowballing. If each city past around the 8th provides an increase of approximately 6% culture and 8% science, (On the base costs the increase modifies, not on your empire-wide totals) the culture and science reduction per city should be 5% and 7% respectively imo.

That means that founded or annexed cities will provide most of their benefit in extra production, supply cap and gold. Meanwhile puppets will provide most of their benefit in science, culture and gold.

Currently I feel like that cities past the first few provide about 6% culture and 8% science, but increase costs by 13% and 12%. This disparity makes them totally non-viable in most cases. Even if you're seeking production and gold, having every city add a 7 and 4 percent penalty to culture and science absolutely kills the idea.

I could see lowering the culture/science scaler by about 2-3% at each level, but any more than that would really throw off the timing of things.

The culture from trade routes seems kind of high to me. Why even run internal routes? Also trade routes don't scale with city number so it really favors either going tall or puppeting your other cities.

This is why I think the high city expansion costs are a problem. The amount of culture you can gain from sources that don't scale with city number is so large, why would I want to reduce that number? I'll happily take some puppets because I have spare happiness, but its a big deal to reduce your culture and science by settling.

I may drop it back to 34 - I’ve been happy with 25 (it was 50) but the AI also tends to favor international routes.

 

[ElliotS]

I could see lowering the culture/science scaler by about 2-3% at each level, but any more than that would really throw off the timing of things.

Then increase the base costs and decrease them a bit further imo. If 4 cities is really the minimum then decrease it to 8% and 9% and increase base costs by 3% across the board imo.

Inb4: That buffs conquest too much. They can just puppet, which is what they do now. The biggest buff would be to peaceful wide expanders, and they're pretty weak right now imo.

 

[Gazebo]

Then increase the base costs and decrease them a bit further imo. If 4 cities is really the minimum then decrease it to 8% and 9% and increase base costs by 3% across the board imo.

Inb4: That buffs conquest too much. They can just puppet, which is what they do now. The biggest buff would be to peaceful wide expanders, and they're pretty weak right now imo.

It really isn't that simple, at all. Besides, changing base costs means hundreds of cost changes.

G

 

[BazaarJack]

Late to the party, but very appreciative of the CIV balance changes. The only one that surprised me was Arabia, because most reports I've read is that they have a very solid CV game right now, but I guess it was kind of curious when Markets got buffed, Bazaar lost some appeal.

Played a game as Songhai recently, and with the gold from the early UU / easy culture / early UB - it definitely seemed like godmode. I generally play King, but have been playing Emperor a bit lately and I was really surprised at how they snowballed. I was especially left impressed with the mobility of their armies, which is something I had discounted many times before when considering choosing them. I think the change to production is good nerf, that is balanced by the synergy with the UB.

I played a game with Japan at Emperor for comparison sake, and really struggled. As luck would have it, spawned next to Songhai - it took well into Medieval to even attempt to fight them, and had to wait for them to declare on someone else first. I'll let others weigh in here, but Japan came off feeling rather weak. Perhaps I should have bee-lined Dojos, but I'm addicted to Oracle. (perhaps a personal problem)

Ethiopia getting a buff, albeit a rather small one is not optimal - the extra techs they get always seem to place them in the top tier. I've also started running some AI v AI games recently and I've seen the same results there. They never struggle.

I love the bump for the Ottomans, TRs finishing requires such a delicate balance with diplomacy and losing a trade route to barbs usually ended up with a ragequit on my part. I'd like to play a game with them soon and update on whether the 50% is overboard. I'll also throw them in an AI v AI game and see what happens.

Also, really excited for the Spain buff, I think they've got a fun design, and the naval buff should push them into the top tier. I play multiplayer a fair bit, and this is a favorite dark horse pick.

Sweden/Venice/Russia/Persia I can't really comment on, although I've been considering a Venice singleplayer game recently, so maybe now is a good time. Multiplayer game is just too passive with them, you end up twiddling thumbs most of the game while other people are playing. Can anyone make the case for why Sweden/Russia/Persia are fun to play, I've never been able to convince myself to try them?

 

[Ziad]

Did you change it so that you can only send trade routes to CS allies?