Patch update on the Firaxis livestream

[Furycrab]

I see nothing wrong with that. You're not playing against Players, you're playing against characters, so it makes a lot of sense that they all have their characteristics that can be abused. I don't want Singleplayer to emulate Multiplayer, because if it tries to be that, then it will never be anything than the worse version of Multiplayer.

The great thing about Singleplayer-Diplomacy IS that you have opponents that are not "smart", that are not RATIONAL, but can instead be manipulated like you'd expect from exaggerated characters. That's one of the greatest feeling a 4x can deliver - when the whole world burns, not because of your blade, but because of your very word.

Now, obviously things like trading all your resources away to AIs that are more than willing to take them is silly, but that's something that can be fixed. I still think the current system - while it's a lot of fun - does not do a good job at replacing actual diplomacy. Both, the dealmaking/manipulating part of the old diplomacy, and the new system could perfectly go hand in hand and benefit each other.

See my problem with that is it makes strategy feel like it went out the window, and to actually find difficulty they have to give the AI more ridiculous bonuses, which in turn leads to your strategy involving ways to harness that even more.

If you have a super aggressive neighbor, but you can divert him for less than the cost of a single unit... How good does he have to be when he actually decides to attack you?

I'd like for my strategy to be about what I do, I see a possibly aggressive and close AI, I change my tech order and build order to have something a bit more defensive, or I go offensive and I focus on expanding with his territory... I hate that the strategy becomes: Look at my diplo screen, and try and figure out a way to get him to go to war in the other direction or lose horribly regardless of what you build.

I do agree it doesn't replace some aspects, like plotting to double team someone, but I honestly don't miss a lot of the things they removed. It always messed with the pacing of the game. Most of it the AI just accepted based on simple math and not for it's own self interest... Which meant for the AI to be difficult to beat they had to give it bigger bonuses assuming you could snowball off what it was giving you.

I don't think the new systems are perfect, for example I think it's stupid that you can make a deal for say Free workers, which is amazing... but then you can cancel the deal immediately after you've pumped out enough workers before the player who gave you the deal can get any reasonable amount of diplo capital... which means they have to sorta program the AI to get angry about it... or for the AI to refuse giving you the deal too early? The whole thing is wonky.

However I like the direction the diplomacy is going a whole lot more. I just wish we weren't the guinea pigs and this didn't feel like them using BE to test out mechanics for a future CiVI ish game and basically not caring what state the expansions for BE launch, as long as they can meet deadlines.

 

[Acken]

When it comes to bribes it's really easy to add conditions on it.

That was one of the first thing I did in my C5 balance mod. Make it very hard to bribe away a warmonger that is preparing to kill you.
Bribes and diplomatical manipulations are not necessarily a problem in themselves. Loopholes and poor trade valuations are.

 

[legalizefreedom]

Anyone notice a different city zoom or icon size? I don't know what it is, but I can actually see everything in the city screen now.

 

[oakdragon]

Hopefully the Mac patch will be out soon. *crosses fingers*

 

[MasterEcabob]

Looks like the lush marvel quest got nerfed pretty hard. Use to only need 3 nodes, now you need 5! Looks like you won't be able to leash siege worms before turn 100 anymore. Any idea if the other marvel quests were changed?

 

[WiseGreen]

- You can't actually trade stuff
- You can't make "real" agreements, only the game-y stuff
- You can't tell people to (not) do things
- You can't manipulate the global playing field
- You can't make gifts
- You can't ask for tribute
etc.

IMHO, at least some of these are actually clumped into the new alliance system, albeit in a very opaque way (which is bad), requiring more involvement in some ways and less in others. "Trading" resources means sending trading routes to people you're cooperative/allied with. Asking for tribute is doing kinda the same thing, except with people you've managed to cooperate or ally with through fear instead of respect. There's still some degree of manipulating the diplomacy field, but only through alliances, which makes it a) slower, b) less predictable, and c) more risky to the player. I don't think these are bad per se, but the lack of transparency makes it frustrating as hell.

This is what I'd change, if it were (is?) doable right now. I'd add a tooltip somewhere in the diplomacy window that explained exactly why each AI has that amount of fear and respect towards you. I'd also try making fear and respect gains be more static instead of the incremental changes we have right now, something like needing to be somewhat on par with the AI on something to keep neutral status, needing X more to raise respect, and risking loss of respect by having X less. Displaying this info would also give the diplomacy system a sort of a "quest" feel to it, I think, which would be appropriate to what BERT does in other areas (like, quests )

I'd also bring back at least the option to demand other players to keep their distance from you, to stop spying, to not hunt for artifacts near you, and to know if they're declaring war on you when their army is on your borders, with a respect reward/penalty when one party breaks such a promise.

For instance: you open the diplomacy window, you click on Hutama, and you move your cursor to the respec icon; a floating tooltip appears saying "-1: You have too few international trade routes (0 [in red]/7 [their total])"; "0: Your culture per turn is okay (21 [in grey]/23)"; "+1: Whoah, that's a lot of energy you have (2100 [in green]/200)". Something like that.

 

[Gorbles]

No point making a new thread for this, but I wanted to express my thanks to Firaxis ( / 2K) for getting this patch out so quickly.

It's a vast improvement on the delivery of vanilla's Fall Patch in terms of waiting time and it delivers a considerable amount of content and bug fixes.

Makes me hopeful of more, and I'm glad Firaxis have defied the naysayers once more. If they keep on improving at this rate there'll be no excuse to not expect focused balance changes (which seem to be most of the high-level complaints I've seen).

 

[poom3619]

Well, yeah. While I don't really remember when Firaxis' action isn't imply something wrong within their process in last few years. This is a good improvement for the game.

This also make me a bit more hopeful, remember not to crush it again

 

[Ryika]

IMHO, at least some of these are actually clumped into the new alliance system, albeit in a very opaque way (which is bad), requiring more involvement in some ways and less in others. "Trading" resources means sending trading routes to people you're cooperative/allied with. Asking for tribute is doing kinda the same thing, except with people you've managed to cooperate or ally with through fear instead of respect. There's still some degree of manipulating the diplomacy field, but only through alliances, which makes it a) slower, b) less predictable, and c) more risky to the player. I don't think these are bad per se, but the lack of transparency makes it frustrating as hell.

That's not the same though. You're not "trading" resources, you're conjuring resources from the void, you're not "asking for tribute", you meet some artificial requirements and conjure a stronger bonus from the void. You don't manipulate the world either, you just drag people into your own wars. Again based on those artificial requirements.

If old diplomacy was that kid whose parents never taught him any manners but could become a good person if only someone were to do some work on him, then new diplomacy is his aborted brother when it comes to real diplomacy as we know it from other 4x-games. But again, I like the system - it just fills a completely different role than what we had before and not having these options makes the game worse for me.

 

[Roxlimn]

FWIW, I never liked the old "Diplomacy" system, because all they were were dumb secret clickfests that you need to play in order to play past a certain difficulty - for bragging rights, more often than not. They were neither particularly clever as a mechanic, nor did they take any brainpower to leverage. You just clicked.

It bothered me every time it came up and it still bothered me in-game when I inadvertently would take advantage of something of that nature.

By the by - the Strategic Resource concept in BERT is completely whacked. Not because you conjure something from nothing. The real gift of real world trading is that it essentially does conjure something for nothing - just by exchanging things, you increase value and utility or everything across the board. It is almost literally making something out of nothing. The real problem with Strategic Resources in BERT is that they appear not to have a central overarching theme and concept. Rarity is very swingy - you either have none or you have tens, over a hundred, even. So their use in locking away special units becomes more of a flavor point rather than a real limitation. No one needs a hundred Battlesuits.

 

[Furycrab]

That's not the same though. You're not "trading" resources, you're conjuring resources from the void, you're not "asking for tribute", you meet some artificial requirements and conjure a stronger bonus from the void. You don't manipulate the world either, you just drag people into your own wars. Again based on those artificial requirements.

If old diplomacy was that kid whose parents never taught him any manners but could become a good person if only someone were to do some work on him, then new diplomacy is his aborted brother when it comes to real diplomacy as we know it from other 4x-games. But again, I like the system - it just fills a completely different role than what we had before and not having these options makes the game worse for me.

But in this little analogy, the AI in the old system was always a downs kid that was never ever going to learn how to use diplomacy properly, but we just hoped we could tell it to stop taking candy from strangers and we could give it enough outside help that it actually acted enough like a real person that people wanted to play with it.

The new system at the very least the AI isn't doing something that is stupid when it accepts a deal. If you give away early deals to get diplo capital, which is effectively a slightly different currency, the AI is at least programmed to do so for something it wanted. It's also it's own resource, so it's hard to get a jump on your initial build order in the early game, but it can still be used like gold later in the game. On the other hand, if you go making deals to get these bonuses, you are effectively paying for them with a form of gold, so the AI does get something out of it.

The AI has at least a good chance of making deals that make you go: Well hmmm, that helps me, but it also helps him... I've already seen behavior that makes more sense, like how AIs will rush to try and get deals for Outpost growth or Free workers in the early game. On the other hand, I almost never went... Well that AI knows what's up offering me GPT for something that isn't doing anything for me, in exchange for happiness he doesn't currently need!

As for manipulating AI to go into wars or worst asking for bribes to go in wars you were going to start anyways... I never liked it. It just makes zero licks of strategic sense. For a real player to take such a deal, he would either A) already have the army ready to go and is basically just asking for a push... or B) The bribe would have to be so big you could almost literally buy the army on the same turn.

It's basically trying to simulate table talk... but the AI fails miserably at it. If the AI is always going to be miserable at it, and players always trying to find ways to exploit it, and as a result the devs feel they have to give the AI bigger bonuses to provide a challenge... I say stop trying, take it out to pasture, and try something else.

 

[ShaggyCan]

A couple things I noticed:
- the war score screen now tells you when the AI is not ready to consider peace terms (because you have not been fighting long enough) rather than the old system of the AI just saying "no" without telling you why.
- If the AI comes to you for peace and is losing the war, it is able to draft a peace term favorable to you based on the war spoils. I was winning 50-0 and the AI offered me some energy and diplo capital. It's nice to see peace terms that include energy and diplo capital.
- the war spoils screen works well IMO.

The whole minimum amount of turns for war is something I hope gets fixed/modded out. It just feels like lazy programming to me, for many reasons; 10 turns is nothing midgame, but at the end is a LONG time. Not only that but how close the two civs are makes a huge difference (army contact difference, how long it takes to engage). Better programming would have there be a reason for the AI to declare, and then a reason to stop the war, regardless of turns. IF say the armies are all lined up and you kill half his army in 3 turns, the AI should go, hey maybe this is a bad idea.... not oh I have to wait 7 more turns until half my cities are gone.

 

[MadDjinn]

By the by - the Strategic Resource concept in BERT is completely whacked. Not because you conjure something from nothing. The real gift of real world trading is that it essentially does conjure something for nothing - just by exchanging things, you increase value and utility or everything across the board. It is almost literally making something out of nothing.

the 'money' side of it, sure you could go with 'something from nothing'. prices are set, valuations add, grift off the top, etc.

But the actual physical thing isn't made from thin air. It actually moves from one place to another. That is the real problem with the BERT trade routes. Getting max all strategics from a trade route where the city in question doesn't even have one, well.. that really is out of thin air.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The whole minimum amount of turns for war is something I hope gets fixed/modded out. It just feels like lazy programming to me, for many reasons; 10 turns is nothing midgame, but at the end is a LONG time. Not only that but how close the two civs are makes a huge difference (army contact difference, how long it takes to engage). Better programming would have there be a reason for the AI to declare, and then a reason to stop the war, regardless of turns. IF say the armies are all lined up and you kill half his army in 3 turns, the AI should go, hey maybe this is a bad idea.... not oh I have to wait 7 more turns until half my cities are gone.

I think the minimum turns to peace is designed to prevent the player from exploiting the war score mechanic. If you don't have a minimum turns then it would be too easy for a player to set up their army, declare war, take an AI city in one turn, sue for peace immediately and reap a big reward, before the AI even had a chance to defend itself. Rince and repeat. And since you are always waiting until your military is perfectly positioned to win in 1 turn before you DoW, the AI will never have a chance to defend itself. With the minimum turn, the player has to at least defend their holdings before reaping the rewards of the war score and the AI at least has an opportunity to counter attack.

 

[Lord Tirian]

But the actual physical thing isn't made from thin air. It actually moves from one place to another. That is the real problem with the BERT trade routes. Getting max all strategics from a trade route where the city in question doesn't even have one, well.. that really is out of thin air.

Yeah, same here. I don't mind the Civ5/Civ:BE method of trade routes producing gold, science, production and food - I can totally "rationalise" that as market pushing things around, food being "created" by moving long-term stored stuff like grains or complementary produce around to get "more for your buck" and having less waste. Similarly with production, economy of scale and all that. The yields are sufficiently abstract that they're covering a huge range of interchangeable goods anyway.

The whole point of strategics is, however, that they are not interchangeable and a limited resource. Having them produced out of nowhere goes against the design of them, namely that you have to "grab" them.

With the minimum turn, the player has to at least defend their holdings before reaping the rewards of the war score and the AI at least has an opportunity to counter attack.

The problem isn't the minimum turn limit (which was in Civ5, too), but the lack of transparency. If the game communicated why, people would be less annoyed by it.

 

[omniclast]

My guess is they've added the black market thing as a precursor to taking trade route strategics out. Can say I'll be sad to see them go.



Could also explain why they didn't bother fixing the numerous local resource requirement bugs.

Edit: why is that angry face there...?

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The problem isn't the minimum turn limit (which was in Civ5, too), but the lack of transparency. If the game communicated why, people would be less annoyed by it.

I think the game does tell you. The war score box says "the AI is not ready to discuss peace terms" and at the top of the screen, the AI sends you a message saying something like "We have not even begun to fight". I think the meaning is clear.

 

[Lord Tirian]

My guess is they've added the black market thing as a precursor to taking trade route strategics out. Can say I'll be sad to see them go.

On some level, I think they'd be interesting... as reward for being allied with somebody.

I'd still dislike the "magicness" of them but it'd be a good incentive to become allied, given how dangerous this can be now.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

On some level, I think they'd be interesting... as reward for being allied with somebody.

I'd still dislike the "magicness" of them but it'd be a good incentive to become allied, given how dangerous this can be now.

I don't think strategic resources need to be removed from trade routes completely, just toned down and have the resources deducted from the player sending the route, to remove the "magicness". I do think having both the black market and trade routes giving strategic resources is a good way of giving the player options for getting the resources. If the player has alliances, they can get S.R that way but if they don't have any friends to trade with then they go to the black market to get them. Very "real world" mechanic that adds immersion.

 

[Gokudo01]

The patch is ok but they didn't fix any "light" bug :

- Quantum computer still gives affinity bonus xp, you have to change it into the xml files manually.
- you can still build any improvement on basic resources : why would I build a plantation if i get more with a farm or an academy ?
- some tooltips just disappear !!!