QoL Suggestions

[Hippie_Peace_man]

World Maps should be available to trade in the mid renaissance era at the latest. Gameplay-wise, I would prefer trading world maps to be available in late-medieval, early-renaissance era. It seems stupidly bizarre to me that world maps can’t be traded until late industrial era (which is late 18th to mid 19th century)
AI should value world maps on a standard map at 1000 gold max. My memory might be deceiving me, (I am sanctioned in my current game, so I can’t check) but it seems insane that the AI values world maps at tens of thousands of gold. I could understand that on Giant maps, but not on standard and especially on small maps, that is an unreasonable amount of gold for a world map.
Year progression should be modified. With the new balance encouraging production over science and preventing scientific snowball, I usually don’t research writing until 100-200 AD. It’s a petty thing, especially since these changes could upset Mayan balance, but it feels weird to me when I’m in the year 1945 and it’s not even the modern era. The modern era, for context, is from mid 19th century to the turning of the century.
Also, I dislike Open Door WC proposals. I’m not sure if they’re balanced, but they just feel unfun, because it encourages WC snowballing (WC members gang up on the weakest members and Open Door all of their CS allies. Losing CS allies means you can no longer make proposals to WC, which means you can’t repeal it).

 

[Stalker0]

I actually consider Open Doors a great tactic exactly when I'm sucking on CS work. I find most AIs are on board with it, so it helps me get favor. And its the old "if I can't have em, no one can". This way I get an easy friendship, and no AI can snag an ally out of them to use against me.

 

[Hippie_Peace_man]

I actually consider Open Doors a great tactic exactly when I'm sucking on CS work. I find most AIs are on board with it, so it helps me get favor. And its the old "if I can't have em, no one can". This way I get an easy friendship, and no AI can snag an ally out of them to use against me.

I don't know what to say other than that's not my experience. The AI is always against an Open Door unless it's against someone whom they don't like. Not only are Open Doors unrealistic (If a country was an ally with a strong military power, would they really just give up that protection and alliance just because the international community told them "no"?), they're a cheap way to eliminate someone from play.

 

[CrazyG]

I don't know what to say other than that's not my experience. The AI is always against an Open Door unless it's against someone whom they don't like. Not only are Open Doors unrealistic (If a country was an ally with a strong military power, would they really just give up that protection and alliance just because the international community told them "no"?), they're a cheap way to eliminate someone from play.

I believe the open door proposal is a real life historical reference to the open door policy to China created by western powers.

I don't see any issue with the proposal, the loss of a single ally isn't that big of a deal and it's better to have your ally hit by open door rather than have another civ pass sphere of influence on it. I don't see how it snowballs, no one gets that vote. Sphere of influence snowballs a lot more, but still isn't even close to World Religion as a way to get votes.

 

[Moi Magnus]

World Maps should be available to trade in the mid renaissance era at the latest. Gameplay-wise, I would prefer trading world maps to be available in late-medieval, early-renaissance era. It seems stupidly bizarre to me that world maps can’t be traded until late industrial era (which is late 18th to mid 19th century)

This mostly ask the question "should map trading be a thing".
Currently, map trading is in practice absent from the game, and I'm personally fine with it and would not miss it if it was totally removed.

But I understand peoples who like this feature and would like to have it being more present in the game. I oppose late-medieval / early-renaissance without conditions, though.

Why? When you explore new continents in renaissance, I actually enjoy discovering progressively the new civilizations and the shape of the continent. If you could just trade maps with the first civ you encounter, it would makes all that exploration feel useless (hence boring).

So I'm more in favor of early-industrial. Alternatively, I'm also fine with something as early as early-medieval if we add "declaration of friendship" as a condition to be able to trade maps.
[In fact, maybe that's already the case. I didn't made any map trading in the last year, so I don't even remember if it require a declaration of friendship]

 

[CrazyG]

This mostly ask the question "should map trading be a thing".
Currently, map trading is in practice absent from the game, and I'm personally fine with it and would not miss it if it was totally removed.

But I understand peoples who like this feature and would like to have it being more present in the game. I oppose late-medieval / early-renaissance without conditions, though.

Why? When you explore new continents in renaissance, I actually enjoy discovering progressively the new civilizations and the shape of the continent. If you could just trade maps with the first civ you encounter, it would makes all that exploration feel useless (hence boring).

So I'm more in favor of early-industrial. Alternatively, I'm also fine with something as early as early-medieval if we add "declaration of friendship" as a condition to be able to trade maps.
[In fact, maybe that's already the case. I didn't made any map trading in the last year, so I don't even remember if it require a declaration of friendship]

I actually trade maps sometimes. It can be common if you end up with little to no coastal cities. Trading completes natural wonders quests. You don't need a declaration of friendship.

I'd be okay with it coming a little bit earlier, but not in Renaissance.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I had prior debate with Zebo over whether or not map trading had exploitable values in the trade menu. Had several examples of civs offering me significant GPT values.

This is why I disable elements like tech trading in game setup, as to avoid instances where I'll feel guilty for taking advantage of AI. Map trading has basically fallen into that category for me. I don't always get trade offers, but when I do, they are of unusually high value (30+ GPT).

On that note, I would also like to know how exactly strategic resource trading works, because most of the time it's fruitless. Regardless of other factors such as diplomatic relationship or civ traits (Askia should value those horses more than Korea), I'm usually looking at silly values if I'm trying to acquire a couple iron, horses, coal, etc.. On the flip side, when the AI approaches you for your strategics, they're basically being given away; most times I don't even accept the insulting gold offer, and will just give them the resources as a gift for positive diplo. I don't know if it's meant to be this way as to not have it be exploitable by humans, but I'm just not a fan.

Spoiler :

This is just one example, but is basically the status quo over every game.

 

[Hippie_Peace_man]

Regarding my point about adjusting year progression to be more accurate, attached are some pictures of what I believe the in-game year should be when you start a "tech column" (not including rushing). I know it's a really petty thing, but it's just incredibly immersion breaking when the in-game year is way ahead of world-wide technological progression and makes the game feel like I have to rush.
Also, I might have screwed up the Ancient Era. Anybody else's thoughts?

 

[Mad Madigan]

It's worth mentioning that tech progression is heavily tied to game difficulty: Generally, the higher the difficulty, the faster the game progresses through the "eras" of technology. It's also dependent on map size and map type, as maps that allow for Civs to "peacefully" expand more and have more non-puppet cities tend to slow down tech progression globally due to the scaling tech cost modifier of having more and more cities. On Deity at standard map size and a map script like Continents or Pangaea the game tends to reach the Industrial/Modern era in the 1500-1600s. On Prince/King on a huge map (like Mediterranean or Tectonic) with lots of open expansion room the game tends to reach the Industrial Era closer to 1800.

As much as I'd love to see the technological eras occur as close to their "real" time periods as possible, at this point I'm pretty sure it's impossible unless overall tech costs scaled upwards with game difficulty. And to figure out what that scaling might be we'd have to run hundreds of AI games at several difficulty levels in order to measure that shift in progression speed. I really don't think it's worth it to worry about it. I tend to play mostly at Emperor difficulty on Large maps, so I personally adjust the overall tech costs UPWARDS about 25-40% in order to have the eras occurring at more "realistic" years in the timeline, but those percentages only work for the very specific settings that I like to play with.

 

[tu_79]

Trading maps requires a declaration of friendship? If not, that would be a way to prevent abuse.

About tech pacing, I guess it could be looked at. One reason for the increased speed in higher difficulties is that AI gets more yields overall. Even gaining a few more food yields can make it easier for producing science by allowing more scientists, a few more hammers get the libraries built sooner, and so on. The other reason is that AI get research discounts.

If we wanted technologies happening at their proper time, AI research cost should be higher with higher difficulty, not the opposite. Even then, map sizes also factor in. Player tech costs is different from AI, so the bigger the map, the lesser the player's influence on overall progress.
So, making techs even in difficulty needs:
1. Player and AI tech costs to be the same.
2. Tech cost to increase with difficulty level for player and AI alike.

But immortal players like to finish their games around turn 350 and seem to think that it is OK for war chief to require 100 more turns.

 

[Hippie_Peace_man]

Obviously this wouldn’t fit into Vox Populi, but I’d be interested in a separate year counter that is purely UI (not used for Mayan UA) that uses the average amount of technologies discovered world-wide to calculate the year. How could one make this?