Why is VP so unbalanced? (not a rant)

[Intrspace]

Hi. I made an account just to post this feedback

Straight to the point, I play on Huge maps and Marathon with 12 - 16 civs, and while I haven't yet completed a whole game with Vox Populi, I find some things utterly broken.

Like scouts. While it's cool that they get XP for discovering terra incognita, on a Huge map, you will end up with a scout with over 1000 total XP with all the movement upgrades. He will fly across the map and over mountains, which I think is a bit silly. It means you will ever need only 1 scout (the one you got for free at the start).

Also I found it that stealing tech with spies is way too strong. At the start of the Renaissance era, you will be making about 150 beakers per turn. Stealing tech gives you 9000 beakers after 30 turns. This means that using one spy to steal tech will single-handedly triple your science gain. This way you easily go from last in tech to first.

From my games it seems like Skirmishers are overpowered and the only counter is another Skirmisher. Even pikemen are useless against them because the Skirmisher gets a +40% strength bonus from terrain, while the pikeman gets only a +33% against cavalry. And in a 1v1, the Skirmisher always wins because he can hit your pikeman twice (once on his turn and once when defending on your turn).

While I admittedly never got that far, by looking at the late-game units in the civilopedia, it seems like the relative strength upgrade for every new unit decreases over time, which would mean that upgrading your army is less important with time. In the base game it's the opposite.

I assume this is a quirk of the difficulty setting Immortal, but I consistently ranked last by military strength even when I was almost at my force limit with 5 cities.

And that's about all I can think of. Thank you

 

[Rekk]

Unfortunately, the game is not well tuned at settings other than standard length, standard map size.

 

[Teholb]

Unfortunately, the game is not well tuned at settings other than standard length, standard map size.

How badly does Epic speed skew things? I've recently been playing with Epic because I like the slower pace (uniques stay relevant for longer), but I know that the scaling is a little weird.

 

[Stalker0]

Unfortunately, the game is not well tuned at settings other than standard length, standard map size.

True, but this kind of feedback can help with that.

The scout thing probably is what it is, and personally I don't have an issue with it. I generally have one "super scout" on standard maps as well, and frankly that's all I need. Scouting is not something that requires 10 units in this game, its okay if 1-2 good units just do the job, it doesn't mean the role is not important, it just doesn't require a lot of committment on hammers.

On the spies, since we are talking about spy changes in other threads its good to get feedback. Perhaps the scaler on missions for marathon lengths is simply out of whack.

 

[Rekk]

How badly does Epic speed skew things? I've recently been playing with Epic because I like the slower pace (uniques stay relevant for longer), but I know that the scaling is a little weird.

As you said, the scaling is a little weird. City State quest rewards in particular grow in strength disproportionately. I don't know what the spy system is like.

 

[Jdoug312]

Haven't played in a while but does the AI use aircraft effectively now?

 

[KlHannibal2]

Hi. I made an account just to post this feedback

Straight to the point, I play on Huge maps and Marathon with 12 - 16 civs, and while I haven't yet completed a whole game with Vox Populi, I find some things utterly broken.

Like scouts. While it's cool that they get XP for discovering terra incognita, on a Huge map, you will end up with a scout with over 1000 total XP with all the movement upgrades. He will fly across the map and over mountains, which I think is a bit silly. It means you will ever need only 1 scout (the one you got for free at the start).

Also I found it that stealing tech with spies is way too strong. At the start of the Renaissance era, you will be making about 150 beakers per turn. Stealing tech gives you 9000 beakers after 30 turns. This means that using one spy to steal tech will single-handedly triple your science gain. This way you easily go from last in tech to first.

From my games it seems like Skirmishers are overpowered and the only counter is another Skirmisher. Even pikemen are useless against them because the Skirmisher gets a +40% strength bonus from terrain, while the pikeman gets only a +33% against cavalry. And in a 1v1, the Skirmisher always wins because he can hit your pikeman twice (once on his turn and once when defending on your turn).

While I admittedly never got that far, by looking at the late-game units in the civilopedia, it seems like the relative strength upgrade for every new unit decreases over time, which would mean that upgrading your army is less important with time. In the base game it's the opposite.

I assume this is a quirk of the difficulty setting Immortal, but I consistently ranked last by military strength even when I was almost at my force limit with 5 cities.

And that's about all I can think of. Thank you

I also play huge maps epic deity domination most of the time.

I don't mind the scout situation at all. I actually like to have a super scout that makes exploring that much fast. He is not winning you the game.

Full agreement on the spy thing. On epic it's less drastic, but still way too high science yields. All spies together give as much or a bit more than my other science sources over time. So I play without spies currently.

As for the late game, tanks feel more powerful than infantry, to the point where I only build tanks late game and even use experienced infantry from earlier times as garrisons.

But all in all, I think the balance is quite good. The developers used a lot of feedbak to improve this mod over time. Big thanks!

 

[Rosete]

I will push back on the point of spies being too strong. Playing on Deity, spies are the only thing that keeps me at least 1-2 techs behind the AI. Without spies, the game very quickly becomes "how fast can I kill the AI before they completely outstrip me in tech?" With the AI bonuses as they are, I find the yields from spies necessary.

Haven't played in a while but does the AI use aircraft effectively now?

I think AI used aircraft very well. They are very good at using aircrafts+missles to snipe your siege units, lost many of my highly promoted artillery to AI bombers.

 

[KlHannibal2]

I will push back on the point of spies being too strong. Playing on Deity, spies are the only thing that keeps me at least 1-2 techs behind the AI. Without spies, the game very quickly becomes "how fast can I kill the AI before they completely outstrip me in tech?" With the AI bonuses as they are, I find the yields from spies necessary.

I might agree for peaceful games. But in domination, I feel it's too easy. Starting in industrial, after conquering one or 2 AIs, the rest becomes quite easy to conquer, if the AIs don't have a large tech lead. And in a domination game, if you are not killed early, conquering everything is often just a question of time. The biggest late game threat is an AI science victory.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

Playing on Deity, spies are the only thing that keeps me at least 1-2 techs behind the AI.

But don't the AI players have spies too? Sometimes I wonder if the spies contribute to AI runaways at higher levels more than the catch-up mechanic helps (I don't play Deity however, only Immortal/Emperor, so I'll rely on your take on it there).

 

[Jdoug312]

I will push back on the point of spies being too strong. Playing on Deity, spies are the only thing that keeps me at least 1-2 techs behind the AI. Without spies, the game very quickly becomes "how fast can I kill the AI before they completely outstrip me in tech?" With the AI bonuses as they are, I find the yields from spies necessary.



I think AI used aircraft very well. They are very good at using aircrafts+missles to snipe your siege units, lost many of my highly promoted artillery to AI bombers.

How about the fighter line? The issue was that once I got my fleet of bombers online, I could steamroll the AI because they wouldn't counter my bombers with fighters. I tried to bring this up A LOT, but this particular topic never drew interest from the community.

 

[KlHannibal2]

But don't the AI players have spies too? Sometimes I wonder if the spies contribute to AI runaways at higher levels more than the catch-up mechanic helps (I don't play Deity however, only Immortal/Emperor, so I'll rely on your take on it there).

In my experience, AIs use spies mainly for other purposes. In my own cities they sabotaged production and "stole" gold. And they used them in city states. Only a few times they "stole" science from me.

It seems you get way less science if the spy target does not have more techs than you.

 

[Revolutionist_8]

From my games it seems like Skirmishers are overpowered and the only counter is another Skirmisher. Even pikemen are useless against them because the Skirmisher gets a +40% strength bonus from terrain, while the pikeman gets only a +33% against cavalry. And in a 1v1, the Skirmisher always wins because he can hit your pikeman twice (once on his turn and once when defending on your turn).

They can be encircled and you can use ranged units / cavalry to weaken them, but otherwise I agree, it's really annoying for me as well that they are so "tanky".
I think they should be much-much weaker when defending (hard to catch, but easy to kill). Maybe they are like this to help AI? But I definitely agree that something needs to be done in this regard.

 

[balparmak]

How about the fighter line? The issue was that once I got my fleet of bombers online, I could steamroll the AI because they wouldn't counter my bombers with fighters. I tried to bring this up A LOT, but this particular topic never drew interest from the community.

I ran a lot of tests, the AI generally had more or less the same number of bombers & fighters. That said, I don't know if they actually station fighters in the cities that are being bombarded. Still, I'd urge you to make an issue on github, especially after the next release since the new version will have better logging for unit types. People are wary of github but it's a lot easier than it looks, not very different than a forum for posters, but it helps developers a lot in tracking issues.

 

[andersw]

Hi. I made an account just to post this feedback

Straight to the point, I play on Huge maps and Marathon with 12 - 16 civs, and while I haven't yet completed a whole game with Vox Populi, I find some things utterly broken.

Like scouts. While it's cool that they get XP for discovering terra incognita, on a Huge map, you will end up with a scout with over 1000 total XP with all the movement upgrades. He will fly across the map and over mountains, which I think is a bit silly. It means you will ever need only 1 scout (the one you got for free at the start).

Also I found it that stealing tech with spies is way too strong. At the start of the Renaissance era, you will be making about 150 beakers per turn. Stealing tech gives you 9000 beakers after 30 turns. This means that using one spy to steal tech will single-handedly triple your science gain. This way you easily go from last in tech to first.

From my games it seems like Skirmishers are overpowered and the only counter is another Skirmisher. Even pikemen are useless against them because the Skirmisher gets a +40% strength bonus from terrain, while the pikeman gets only a +33% against cavalry. And in a 1v1, the Skirmisher always wins because he can hit your pikeman twice (once on his turn and once when defending on your turn).

While I admittedly never got that far, by looking at the late-game units in the civilopedia, it seems like the relative strength upgrade for every new unit decreases over time, which would mean that upgrading your army is less important with time. In the base game it's the opposite.

I assume this is a quirk of the difficulty setting Immortal, but I consistently ranked last by military strength even when I was almost at my force limit with 5 cities.

And that's about all I can think of. Thank you

Its mainly balanced around standard size and standard speed no extra mods, the more you diverse from that the more it affects balance.

Scouts are nice to have especially for vision, maybe as medics but they wont win you wars and you wont build a lot of them, if you have a super scout thats a very minor impact.

Yields from certain things have their weak and strong periods, religion for example tends to be quite strong in classic and medieval but start to drop off a bit in Renaissance.
Spying is mostly non existent until Renaissance, then it depends a bit, I havent played enough with the new spy system so I dont know how hard it is to spy depending on difficulties.
I definitely have had spies fail/getting caught on difficulties lower than immortal but maybe depends on which ai?

Skirmishers are very strong on under correct circumstances and if there is enough flatland.
Can be hot garbage in hill/forest areas.
They are also limited by a resource, pikemen are not.
But yes its a very good unit in human hands.
(note that combat heavy playstyle is stronger on epic and even more on marathon)

If you play warmonger its super important because you want to keep going with your super experienced units.
Peaceful play is maybe a bit different but usually cheaper to upgrade than building/purchasing new.

So try a game or two on standard/standard and then look at how things are affected by that compared to marathon/huge.

 

[Rekk]

Skirmishers are nuts. They're the strongest unit on open ground, and if you're surrounded by rough terrain you just don't build them, so their down side doesn't often come into play.

 

[Jdoug312]

I ran a lot of tests, the AI generally had more or less the same number of bombers & fighters. That said, I don't know if they actually station fighters in the cities that are being bombarded. Still, I'd urge you to make an issue on github, especially after the next release since the new version will have better logging for unit types. People are wary of github but it's a lot easier than it looks, not very different than a forum for posters, but it helps developers a lot in tracking issues.

I did, either just before or just after the new naming pattern for version numbers.

Edit- It got ignored so I tried to fix the problem myself but references to air units in the code didn't specify if they included both the bomber and fighter line, or if they were just bomber. Likewise, the AA line didn't specify if it was land-based AA only, or if it included the fighter line.

 

[Teholb]

Regarding Skirmishers, the changes that @pineappledan made to them seem to work out fairly well. The way they're implemented currently in VP, as others have stated, creates a very sharp cutoff in usefulness depending on terrain. If it's open, they are the best possible unit. If not, they're close to useless.

 

[azum4roll]

Shameless plug, please try my skirmisher tweaks

 

[CppMaster]

Skirmishers are nuts. They're the strongest unit on open ground, and if you're surrounded by rough terrain you just don't build them, so their down side doesn't often come into play.

Well, yeah, obviously, if you don't build a unit, it's downside doesn't come into play, because how could it? It's the same with every unit/building.