New Version - September 9th (9/9)

[Gazebo]

Hey all,

New version inbound.

Changelog:

Balance:

• Brazil UA - now 25% extra tourism during GAs (was 50%)
• One With Nature: Mountains now produce +1 Faith/Culture for every 3 in your borders (don't have to be worked to gain bonus)

Building changes:

• Observatory: City must be within two tiles of a Mountain. City gains +1 Science for every Mountain tile within its borders.
• Machu Pichu: +15% Gold from City Connections. City gains +1 Food, Production, Culture, and Faith for every Mountain tile in its borders.

Bugs:

• Fixed a few smaller diplomacy and deal quirks and bugs, and improved AI logic regarding trades of 3rd party war/peace and cities.
• Worked a bit on AI over-construction of things like carriers, settlers, workers, etc.
• Pathfinding and other assorted bugs tackled by ilteroi
• Fixed github reported bugs
• Fixed some LUA bugs, including the science tooltip top bar EUI bug.
• Fixed some tooltips and whatnot
• New well art (courtesy Wodhann)
• Edited CSD to have Great Diplomat XML data properly stored
• Fixed a few more SQL/XML errors/problems
• Prophets always pop if possible (random % chance removed)
  

Changed CS aggressor war system:

• If you DOW a CS, the 'cooldown' now makes it so that the CS won't give you quests, and your CS influence anchor will be -20. This will last for 50 turns, or until you become friends with the CS (whichever comes first)
• So...no more permanent 15 turns of war, and no more -10 drop with other CSs

New version online as of 1:15am. Not savegame compatible with previous versions (new memory bits from terrain/belief changes for buildings).

Have fun!

 

[Finarvi]

Prophets always pop if possible (random % chance removed)

Thank you. That was needed.

Overall good changes.

 

[Atlas627]

All the mountain stuff seems really weak to me, but I'll have to try it. Otherwise everything looks great!

 

[Lynnes]

Looks good, thank you!

 

[Funak]

Hey all,

Awesome. Some feedback.

Brazil UA - now 25% extra tourism during GAs (was 50%)

I would love it if this wasn't tied to your capital (same thing with the french UA really) it places you in a weird situation where if you notice some turns in that your capital isn't really amazing, you're pretty much screwed. This is further enhanced by hidden resources.

One With Nature: Mountains now produce +1 Faith/Culture for every 3 in your borders (don't have to be worked to gain bonus)

I think 1 for every 3 might be too low, I know that the mountain-faith isn't really the main benefit of the pantheon, but cities landing 3 mountains in range are rare, 6 mountains in range are close to impossible. I also understand that this might not be a 'per city' thing, and instead more of a global empire thing, but my first argument still stands. Also, mountains are never grabbed by natural border-expansion and costs a fortune to rush-buy.

Chiczen Itza/Observatory changed:
Observatory: City must be within two tiles of a Mountain. City gains +1 Science for every Mountain tile within its borders.

This seems fine to me.

Machu Pichu: +15% Gold from City Connections. City gains +1 Food, Production, Culture, and Faith for every Mountain tile in its borders.
Have fun!

This is a lot of yields, you could probably get rid of the food or the production from it.




Also, I didn't see thing mentioned in the changelog so I'll ask it here instead, did the annoying barb attacking and fortifying/healing on the same turn get fixed? Because it was honestly rather gamebreaking, the average turns taken to reach renaissance era between the version where this was added increased by 30 turns on standard speed.
That's not me reaching renaissance era by the way, that's the AI.

 

[Strigvir]

I would love it if this wasn't tied to your capital (same thing with the french UA really) it places you in a weird situation where if you notice some turns in that your capital isn't really amazing, you're pretty much screwed. This is further enhanced by hidden resources.

Except capital-centric strategies (on which tourism output is strongly dependant) rarely depend on the tiles nearby. The only starts which seriously gimp them are the ones with a lot of mountains or too much bodies of water (because you can't build towns on water).

Also, I didn't see thing mentioned in the changelog so I'll ask it here instead, did the annoying barb attacking and fortifying/healing on the same turn get fixed? Because it was honestly rather gamebreaking, the average turns taken to reach renaissance era between the version where this was added increased by 30 turns on standard speed.
That's not me reaching renaissance era by the way, that's the AI.

It was fixed in a hotfix for the previous version, the how-to-install page was just misleading.

 

[Funak]

Except capital-centric strategies (on which tourism output is strongly dependant) rarely depend on the tiles nearby. The only starts which seriously gimp them are the ones with a lot of mountains or too much bodies of water (because you can't build towns on water).

The french double theming in the capital kinda depends on your capital having enough production to build wonders.
Likewise for Brazil you could end up with a way better culture-city assuming it has better access to jungle.

It was fixed in a hotfix for the previous version, the how-to-install page was just misleading.

I read that, and updated the version, but the bug was still present.

 

[Apostremo]

So is this the comeback of the worker stealing? Some worthwile again, when the only price is a angry CS?

 

[Strigvir]

The french double theming in the capital kinda depends on your capital having enough production to build wonders.

GEs can easily one-shot pre-industrial wonders.

Likewise for Brazil you could end up with a way better culture-city assuming it has better access to jungle.

"The culture city" is the one with lots food for specialists (and slots for great works, obviously). UIs contribute very little to it, unless it's Moroccans.

 

[Funak]

GEs can easily one-shot pre-industrial wonders.

Ok, so because of this UA, France needs to GE every wonder, sounds like a plan.

"The culture city" is the one with lots food for specialists (and slots for great works, obviously). UIs contribute very little to it, unless it's Moroccans.

The Brazilian UI provides almost 10 culture per tile at endgame. That's not 'very little', midgame you can land on 5 culture per tile, which also blows away most of the specialists and and great work.

 

[Strigvir]

Ok, so because of this UA, France needs to GE every wonder, sounds like a plan.

Any empire needs to resort to GEs. Or just have a science superiority.

The Brazilian UI provides almost 10 culture per tile at endgame. That's not 'very little', midgame you can land on 5 culture per tile, which also blows away most of the specialists and and great work.

Are we at "muh kasbahs" again? Of course because UI is situational you won't have a perfect chance to use it.
France and Polynesia have even rougher time on coastal/land cities respectively.

 

[Gazebo]

So is this the comeback of the worker stealing? Some worthwile again, when the only price is a angry CS?

It was never about removing that mechanic, honestly. If people want to do it, they're going to do it. I changed the mechanic because the penalty of the older one was actually shorter (15 turns of no-peace...oh no!) and the -10 to all CSs was cryptic and not terribly intuitive. Now, if you steal a worker in the early game, you are going to miss out on potential camp-hunting quests and other early sources of influence, which means no early boosts to growth/culture/faith etc. from CSs. So now it is a trade-off, not simply a binary 'you are nice/mean' mechanic.

I would love it if this wasn't tied to your capital (same thing with the french UA really) it places you in a weird situation where if you notice some turns in that your capital isn't really amazing, you're pretty much screwed.

I think it is fair to say that, in any game, if your isn't amazing, you are going to be in trouble.

These UAs exist as capital-only bonuses because they're extremely over powered if empire-wide. So no, not going to change these.

I think 1 for every 3 might be too low, I know that the mountain-faith isn't really the main benefit of the pantheon, but cities landing 3 mountains in range are rare, 6 mountains in range are close to impossible. I also understand that this might not be a 'per city' thing, and instead more of a global empire thing, but my first argument still stands.

Possibly too low, we'll see. Cities can 'overlap' their ownership of Mountains, so this is more of a 'if three are close' bonus (you don't have to work the mountains, of course).

If there are six mountain tiles near all three of your cities, that's +6 faith +6 culture. Not bad. Situational, yes, but not bad.

G

 

[Funak]

Any empire needs to resort to GEs. Or just have a science superiority.

Absolutely, but if your second city have hills and your capital doesn't(which is a common problem for floodplain starts) You're still going to be forced to GE rush the wonders in your capital because your UA makes building them in your other cities useless.

Are we at "muh kasbahs" again? Of course because UI is situational you won't have a perfect chance to use it.
France and Polynesia have even rougher time on coastal/land cities respectively.

What? As usual you're not making any sense at all.
First of all France and Polynesia do not have a rougher time, luxuries and coast-tiles are way more common than jungle, but that wasn't the point.
The point was that unless you completely luck out with your starting-location, you're more likely than not to be able to fit more jungle-tiles within the range of your second city than your first one, especially if your only goal is fitting as many jungle-tiles in it as possible.

These UAs exist as capital-only bonuses because they're extremely over powered if empire-wide. So no, not going to change these.

The French one (and I've been complaining about this since vanilla) really isn't overpowered in any way, if it was empire-wide it would share the exact effect of half the Aesthetics finisher, which really isn't anything extreme.
Ofc now the French UA have another element to it, so it doesn't really need a buff, but I'm just saying.

The Brazilian one I completely agree, I still think you designed it in a somewhat silly way where it benefits way too much from outside culture. Making it count tourism like a hotel does would bring the number down and would make a global effect not a big issue.

 

[Stalker0]

Does the observatory do anything other than the mountain science bonus? Otherwise it seems like a waste of hAmmers

 

[Funak]

Does the observatory do anything other than the mountain science bonus? Otherwise it seems like a waste of hAmmers

I think only the old mountain science thing was removed. So it should still have +5 science and a scientist slot.

 

[Apostremo]

It was never about removing that mechanic, honestly. If people want to do it, they're going to do it. I changed the mechanic because the penalty of the older one was actually shorter (15 turns of no-peace...oh no!) and the -10 to all CSs was cryptic and not terribly intuitive. Now, if you steal a worker in the early game, you are going to miss out on potential camp-hunting quests and other early sources of influence, which means no early boosts to growth/culture/faith etc. from CSs. So now it is a trade-off, not simply a binary 'you are nice/mean' mechanic.
G

It's still silly if a armed to the teeth CS can't do anything against a single warrior that snapped a worker and insta peaced out. It's like capturing a city and peace out. It's a exploit. Maybe only 5 round war locked? (or 3, pleeeease.... at least 1.... )

It's a trade off, but a weak one. There are other CS, maybe i don't care about this one mercantile/religious/maritime CS in this game or it just has dumb quests.

Absolutely, but if your second city have hills and your capital doesn't(which is a common problem for floodplain starts) You're still going to be forced to GE rush the wonders in your capital because your UA makes building them in your other cities useless.

It's not optimal, but such is life . There are ways to compensate. Tradition will give early GE's and later you can transfer production from other cities to the capital. Also i wouldn't say double theme boni means that every possible theme bonus is a must have. There are national wonders and museums. Isn't it okay to grab a few wonders, no?

 

[Apostremo]

I think only the old mountain science thing was removed. So it should still have +5 science and a scientist slot.

1 science sounds a bit weak, but maybe the big G is conservative to prevent rings of cities that all use the same 4 mountains or something like that. If it's coded like horses that only enable one city to build stables then it could be 2 or 3 science i think. We will see.

 

[Gazebo]

It's still silly if a armed to the teeth CS can't do anything against a single warrior that snapped a worker and insta peaced out. It's like capturing a city and peace out. It's a exploit. Maybe only 5 round war locked? (or 3, pleeeease.... at least 1.... )

It's a trade off, but a weak one. There are other CS, maybe i don't care about this one mercantile/religious/maritime CS in this game or it just has dumb quests.

It's not optimal, but such is life . There are ways to compensate. Tradition will give early GE's and later you can transfer production from other cities to the capital. Also i wouldn't say double theme boni means that every possible theme bonus is a must have. There are national wonders and museums. Isn't it okay to grab a few wonders, no?

The problem is that forced peace mechanics break the minor civ AI logic. Its why there were so many problems with the previous system.

As it stands now, it is not much different from the previous bullying reward of 'enslave a worker.' Yeah, you can insta-peace, but the penalty of -60 influence, -20 to anchor, no quests for 50 turns and potential wariness of all other CSs is pretty strong. In the vast majority of cases, CSs are weak enough that 1+ turns of forced war would do absolutely nothing anyways.

G

 

[Apostremo]

The problem is that forced peace mechanics break the minor civ AI logic. Its why there were so many problems with the previous system.

As it stands now, it is not much different from the previous bullying reward of 'enslave a worker.' Yeah, you can insta-peace, but the penalty of -60 influence, -20 to anchor, no quests for 50 turns and potential wariness of all other CSs is pretty strong. In the vast majority of cases, CSs are weak enough that 1+ turns of forced war would do absolutely nothing anyways.

G

Oh the CS warmonger wariness is still in place? i thought that was also cut somehow .

Because you brought up weak CSs, is it by design that CSs seems to have less units than in vanilla? Saw CSs with only 1 Archer in industry era multiple times.

 

[Gazebo]

Oh the CS warmonger wariness is still in place? i thought that was also cut somehow .

Because you brought up weak CSs, is it by design that CSs seems to have less units than in vanilla? Saw CSs with only 1 Archer in industry era multiple times.

CSs aren't edited or changed in terms of production/growth, though I can buff em a bit if there's demand.

G