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[lethiel]

A couple more balance comments:

The 1 student per native settlement feature seems to be the only right thing. It should just be the default. In multiplayer people often just stick to the default. It would also be active when you start a game with play now. The tick box should be; 'Old system for learning with the natives'
Furthermore as we are on the topic, learning with a mentor tribe should probably take 2 turns for a free colonist - 1 turn if you have some further bonus. It should never be instant.


The frequent presence of hemp in the central plot feels a little odd, but it should help balance. It should make it a lot easier to make small ships early.

 

[raystuttgart]

The frequent presence of hemp in the central plot feels a little odd, but it should help balance. It should make it a lot easier to make small ships early.

You know that WTP has a new feature which allows you to change the Yield produced on the Central City Plot by clicking it, right?
(The "default Yield" of the Central City Plot is now simply the one with highest Yield amount - otherwise it takes the first Yield in the order of the configuration.)

 

[raystuttgart]

The 1 student per native settlement feature seems to be the only right thing. ...
It should just be the default.

I feel the same, but I do not want to force it on players - unless overwhelming majority wants it that way.
(Also not as default - e.g for "play now")

 

[lethiel]

You know that WTP has a new feature which allows you to change the Yield produced on the Central City Plot by clicking it, right?

P-e-r-f-e-c-t-i-o-n.

 

[lethiel]

I feel the same, but I do not want to force it on players - unless overwhelming majority wants it that way.
(Also not as default - e.g for "play now")

Correcting poor Vanilla balance is a relatively strong argument. But lets wait and see what people say.

 

[raystuttgart]

P-e-r-f-e-c-t-i-o-n.

I think that "changing Yield on Central City Plot" is one of the many small features of WTP most new players do not know.

@lethiel , @Cueball252
Could you please demo that feature from time to time in your twitch channel?
Maybe that way a few more new players will get to know it?

 

[Nightinggale]

You know that WTP has a new feature which allows you to change the Yield produced on the Central City Plot by clicking it, right?
(The "default Yield" of the Central City Plot is now simply the one with highest Yield amount - otherwise it takes the first Yield in the order of the configuration.)

Correction: it will pick the yield, which sells for the most money. It will prefer 1 silver for 20 rather than 5 ore for 3 each. Or at least that's the idea. This is how the AI views it and by default colonies will use the governor, which in turn will use the AI code. You have to specify something else in order to control what is being produced.

I coded this feature because sometimes some yields have a better strategic value than the money value. For instance building input to produce something else. Hemp is a good example of this and so is ore.

 

[lethiel]

@lethiel
@Cueball252

I saw you guys already played a bit with the new version on twitch.
Was it playing well or do you have some issues we should look at?

Played a bit more and found a few bugs/ balance problems.

1) The free profession native trader can only be selected on the docks of Europe not from a right menu in settlements in the new world like missionaries.
2) When revolting slaves capture a settlement all the settlers inside fight back including specialists not just the slaves. So you may have to kill all or most of the colonists to take back the settlement.This may be deliberate but then revolting slaves is very significant feature not just a cute little one.
3) Sometimes you see apparently random visible areas on the sea including enemy ships (screenshot included)
4). Forced march II should be hot fixed. For now I suggest to just make it require a great general until a balanced adjustment is ready.

 

[raystuttgart]

1) The free profession native trader can only be selected on the docks of Europe not from a right menu in settlements in the new world like missionaries.

No, that is not a bug.
It is not "free" because it requires Trade Goods.

2) When revolting slaves capture a settlement all the settlers inside fight back including specialists not just the slaves. So you may have to kill all or most of the colonists to take back the settlement.This may be deliberate but then revolting slaves is very significant feature not just a cute little one.

That is also not really a bug - but it is also not fully working as intended either ...
(I however did not want to instantly raze a city when it is lost to a "Revolting Slave" ...)

To be honest, I did not really expect that the player was really going to get his cities captured by a "Revolting Slave" ...
(Thus I did not really check how the captured "Barbarian City" would fight back.)

I will look into it.

3) Sometimes you see apparently random visible areas on the sea including enemy ships (screenshot included)

I currently have no explanation for that ...
(You are also the first to report something like that.)

4) Forced march II should be hot fixed.

Why? What is wrong with it?
(I think I did not change anything to the promotion itself.)

 

[lethiel]

No, that is not a bug.
It is not "free" because it requires Trade Goods.

got it

To be honest, I did not really expect that the player was really going to get his cities captured by a "Revolting Slave" ...
(Thus I did not really check how the captured "Barbarian City" would fight back.)

I often (used to) have small unprotected settlements with less than 5 settlers. But maybe that is just not viable anymore.

Why? What is wrong with it?
(I think I did not change anything to the promotion itself.)

Well it's just straight up OP I think other people said the same.
You get 4 very strong effects quite early in the 'promotion tech tree' so you can fly around the map like superman - up to 12 or 15 squares in dense mountain terrain . No other promotion is anywhere near as good not even ones that are much harder to get to.
If the promotion would be just a +1 movement bonus alone it would stil be a quite attractive choice.

 

[raystuttgart]

My main problem currently is "time" - because I again try to do too much too fast ...
(Having all these half implemented prototypes and half designed feature concepts lying around drives me crazy though ... )

Thus I could not really take care of the small details as I should.
I also have not had enough time to play longer games and thus lack a bit of feeling for these small details.

At the moment I am still busy coding "Happiness" (almost finished) - which is a considerably big feature / new game concept.
Once it is finished I will stop coding new stuff (for a couple of months) and take time to play / test ingame and fix bugs / improve balancing.

I am ususally modding in "spikes":
A) I first create a lot of new content / features.
B) Then I start playing / testing ingame with the new content and features.
C) When I then discover issues or get reports from community I try to take care of bugfixing and finetuning.

Summary:
I realized that I should not continue creating further new features / content for a couple of months.
"Happiness" will be the last feature I will create for the next couple of months because I will need to take time for quality improvements again.
This will also give the team some time to finish, integrate and merge their work for other improvements (e.g. Savegame Compatibility, Pathfinding, ...)

 

[Cueball252]

@lethiel
@Cueball252

I saw you guys already played a bit with the new version on twitch.
Was it playing well or do you have some issues we should look at?

The slave revolt was going to be my main piece of feedback. I am going to have a look through my footage for you and see what else i found. Otherwise seemed very stable. Also merge treasures - great time

With Easter i have not had a great deal of play time. I need to finish my current game on the release build and I will put some propper hours into it.

 

[raystuttgart]

The slave revolt was going to be my main piece of feedback.

What exactly?

• Are the "revolting slaves" too strong? -> from the feedback I got, I consider to reduce their strength
  
• Does it occur too often? -> because it was already reduced a bit lately
  
• Is it the "fighting back of cities captured by revolting slaves" as lethiel has reported? -> I will look into it, once I finished "Happiness"

 

[Cueball252]

What exactly?

• Are the "revolting slaves" too strong? -> from the feedback I got, I consider to reduce their strength
  
• Does it occur too often? -> because it was already reduced a bit lately
  
• Is it the "fighting back of cities captured by revolting slaves" as lethiel has reported? -> I will look into it, once I finished "Happiness"

1) I did find them to be strong but not too strong once i was established. If you get unlucky early they can be a nuisance, they killed a vet town guard in my play through then i managed to kill the revolting slave with a native merc. I am not sure if there should be a correlation with how many weapons you have in stock and how powerful they could be? (perhaps allowing horses and or muskets to be stolen and augment their strength)

2) I had twice an almost immediate revolt of slaves - they did not seem to step to fleeing - straight to revolting. This may be intended. I also may have been a touch unlucky but i felt the slaves revolted too easily.

3) I don't tend to have undefended cities so i did not experience this! Will report once I do!

 

[Mr. ZorG]

my slaves only escaped or rebelled, appearing on the edge of the cultural boundary. but they never tried to take over the city.

3) Sometimes you see apparently random visible areas on the sea including enemy ships (screenshot included)

I checked a giant map and this bug is observed only on water cells.

 

[raystuttgart]

2) When revolting slaves capture a settlement all the settlers inside fight back including specialists not just the slaves. So you may have to kill all or most of the colonists to take back the settlement.This may be deliberate but then revolting slaves is very significant feature not just a cute little one.

I will look into it.

That is now fixed.

@supporters:
Please check the team and supporter chat or the messages you got.

 

[raystuttgart]

4). Forced march II should be hot fixed. For now I suggest to just make it require a great general until a balanced adjustment is ready.

The balancing of Forced March was adjusted.
(And yes it was already requested by others from community as well - I had just forgotten about it.)

It was really incredibly strong (compared to other mid-tier promotions) and used bonus that other promotions already gave (thus making other promotions less valuable).

It was changed like this:

• removed: No Combat Penalty for Crossing Rivers, Double Movement in Hills
• it still has: +1 Movement Range, Ability to use Enemy Roads

 

[lethiel]

So we got the chance to try out the new Happiness feature on stream as a test/ preview.
It is probably the best thing that happened to this game in a while.

• It makes cash goods useful and exciting! (make the angry face go away)
• Treaties matter now!
• The implications of tax rate on happiness seems spot on perfect (both historically and game play- wise) but I haven't had time to test it for late game yet. You have to seriously consider now to accept a tax increase or not! Before the 'fur party' was never really an option.
• Increases the challenge. You can certainly lose this game now in 2020 in single player. Especially on the higher difficulty levels.

The game feels a little bit different than before but its certainly for the better as game play is improved significantly.

I have not found any negative aspects of the features or any bugs but of course I does have a few balance implications. The current game is only at around 1600 AD so I suspect that the feature is only starting to kick in from now on. But so far the main balance notes are:

• Slaves and especially petty criminals are almost not worth to buy at the moment with their strong negative impact. African slaves could with these chances rise slower in price when bough in Africa. (suggestion: +30 % per purchase). Petty criminals from the king diplo event should probably just be zero cost.
• The feature probably makes builder leaders (William Pen, Hans Egede, the Dutch) quite a bit stronger and warmongers (and the Spanish in particular) weaker.

I will continue the test on stream tomorrow afternoon.

 

[raystuttgart]

It is probably the best thing that happened to this game in a while.
...
The game feels a little bit different than before but its certainly for the better as game play is improved significantly.

Thanks.

I absolutely knew that this feature would change gameplay.
But it is actually not even that dramatic - because it does not give Production Bonusses.

Yes, it affects a lot of game concepts (Population Growth, Learning by Doing, Fleeing and Revolting, Immigration ...) and is affected by many game concepts (Population Size, Wars, Treaties, Buildings, Domestic Market, Slavery, ...).
But actually the effects to a single feature are not too dramatic if you stay in a "normal range" around 5 Happinss to 5 UnHappiness. Which should be doable.
But even if you stay in that "normal range" the total effects it has to all featues will sum up. - You will most likely just not notice though that directly - because each single effect will be realtively small.

And yes, it can also cause Festivities and Unrests.

And yes, it was supposed to make some game concepts which used to have low strategic considerations more important.
(Or to formulate it in other ways: Have more impact and more strategic considerations.)

• Tax Rates
• Treaties and Wars
• Domestic Market
• Slavery
  
• ...

Slaves and especially petty criminals are almost not worth to buy at the moment with their strong negative impact.

Yes, Slaves impact Happiness negatively because they create Unhappiness.
But that could be balanced by reducing their min time to become Free Colonists (by XML setting).

Otherwise:
In Cities with High Happiness they can now become "Free Colonists" faster and will "Flee or Revolt" less often.
If you however put them in Cities with High Unhappiness the contrary happens.

So it matters in which cities you put them ...

... warmongers (and the Spanish in particular) weaker.

Spanish are designed to fight and conquer Natives.

• Wars with Natives will not generated Unhappiness. (Actually that was purposely implemente because of the Spanish.)
• However, they will get more slaves that way, which will generate Unhappiness. (Which I have forgotten to consider.)

Summary:
Maybe we need to adjust the trait of the Spanish Civilization to reduce their Unhappiness from Slaves.
Maybe we also need to adjust the min times for Slaves becoming free.

Community needs to understand that this feature is still in internal testing / balancing phase.
(This feature lives and dies with good balancing.)

 

[Schmiddie]

Maybe it would make sense to "free" slaves and native slaves if the player wants to (e.g. by pressing the button the units just would dissapear with a message, that the unit is free now). Currently there is only the possibility to kill the unit. Player could receive a happiness bonus when he frees a slave?