CivWorld gameplay changes: June 16, 2011

[FXS PeteMurray]

Hello CivWorld Fans! We’ve made another update to the game, with the following changes:

• The gold and science reward caps for Golden Age and Voyage of Discovery are now computed in two steps. First, the reward is scaled to the current era’s victory requirement. Then, the cap is adjusted based on the Civilization’s size. A smaller civ will have a larger reward cap than a civ with more members.
• Domination Victories are now awarded based on the number of players in the defeated civilization. The cutoffs are as follows:
  o First Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 10 players.
  o Second Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 10 players.
  o Third Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 10 players.
  o Fourth Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 15 players.
  o Fifth Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 15 players.
  o Sixth Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 20 players.
  o Seventh Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 20 players.
  o Eighth Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 30 players.
  o Ninth Domination Victory: Defeat a Civ with 40 players.
• The maximum Civilization size is now 20% of the players in the game, down from 33% of players.

Edit: The changes went live on Friday morning, June 17th.

[BoMbaStiXxX]

Could you also list some hidden changes? Like in what way did you change the resource trickle mechanism? It used to be some resources every 10/5/2 minutes (large/modest/small palace) 2 versions ago, I've now noticed that I already get some resources every 2 minutes with my small palace in my current game.

It seems that the harvests as actual main source of income get less and less important each version.

[DanM]

I could be wrong, but I think the trickle rates change over the course of the game (more at the end). Or perhaps it's based on population size?

/shrug just something I've observed but not quantified

[BoMbaStiXxX]

Nope. At least the rate is surely not dependent on the era. The quantity, however, might be.

[AlibechM]

I could be wrong, but I think the trickle rates change over the course of the game (more at the end). Or perhaps it's based on population size?

/shrug just something I've observed but not quantified

I think is based on population size, but not sure either.

[BoMbaStiXxX]

Well, anyways, would be nice to get some data about this from 2K games.

[FXS_Sid]

'Trickle' rate is based on your city's population and your overall productivity in each category as affected by your Wonders, Civics, Great People, and current Era modifiers (i.e. -50% to science during the Dark Ages)

[BoMbaStiXxX]

Rate means quantity in this utterance?

What about the time between trickles? Still dependent on palace size? Or what is palace size useful for in the current version?

[FXS_Sid]

Yes, rate = quantity. The time between trickles is between 2 and 10 minutes: longer if you have a lot of unused harvests. Palace size improves the productivity of citizens who use the Palace as a 'drop-off' location.

[AlibechM]

Yes, rate = quantity. The time between trickles is between 2 and 10 minutes: longer if you have a lot of unused harvests. Palace size improves the productivity of citizens who use the Palace as a 'drop-off' location.

Thanks FXS_Sid, that's clear now. Also I really like the new changes, we were wondering in game 199 if it'd be possible for a civ behind in techs to catch up, and I believe it is possible now with techs getting cheaper + VoD scaled to the current era’s victory requirement. That will help balance issues.

[Glinda]

Does rank affect production? Or is palace decoration just for show?

[FXS_Sid]

Rank does not affect production. It affects the # of fame points you get for an era victory and the # of votes you get during elections.

[Bantams]

btw one slight flaw in the thread title is it was posted on the 17th hello Sid btw Can you fix civ v after you finished with this "experimant"

[JingL]

The time between trickles is between 2 and 10 minutes: longer if you have a lot of unused harvests.

Can you please elaborate on this? Specifically, does having say 10 harvests saved up vs no harvest changes the trickle rate, or it only takes into effect after 24 harvests accumulated? It just seems unfair to be penalizing players for using their harvest strategically (not using them during dark age, for exemple).

[BoMbaStiXxX]

I clocked it yesterday. It only is 2 minutes when you are completely out of harvests. Already with 1 harvest it is 4 minutes. I haven't clocked it for 2/3/4 etc. harvests.

It just seems unfair to be penalizing players for using their harvest strategically (not using them during dark age, for exemple).

I agree, currently it is nothing more but an undocumented _completely_ arbitrary game mechanism.

[William Allen Simpson]

I just was going to post a bug about non-harvest income not working properly! Now, we find out it's because we are saving Harvests.

Also, there's a problem that the number of houses dedicated isn't dominating the equation. I've been taking screen snapshots, and with only 1 house on Culture and 5 on Food, after 14 hours of idle my Hammers, Flasks, and Coins went up about the same as my Culture, and only slightly more for Food. There's definitely something wrong with the algorithms.

[DanM]

The mechanism certainly allows me to focus entirely on science, and depend solely on the trickle of food/production/culture to get money/great people/population. For better or for worse

[Sarcerok]

In my 200 player game the max nation size is 26 players. This is not 20%, it is 13%. This means that the last few domination victories are impossible, and that either the patch or the patch notes are in error.

[BoMbaStiXxX]

I just was going to post a bug about non-harvest income not working properly! Now, we find out it's because we are saving Harvests.

Also, there's a problem that the number of houses dedicated isn't dominating the equation. I've been taking screen snapshots, and with only 1 house on Culture and 5 on Food, after 14 hours of idle my Hammers, Flasks, and Coins went up about the same as my Culture, and only slightly more for Food. There's definitely something wrong with the algorithms.

I think what Sid meant with overall productivity is the bonus/malus numbers and the total amount of citizens. Then it is true, I got 10 hammers (with no bonus/malus) and 22 food (with 120% bonus) with all my citizens being farmers.

[StarStabbedMoon]

In my 200 player game the max nation size is 26 players. This is not 20%, it is 13%. This means that the last few domination victories are impossible, and that either the patch or the patch notes are in error.

I think the notes probably should have read "20% of players that are currently in a nation." That's how it used to be calculated too (without independents), they were never counting total players, though sometimes I wish they would. I'm glad that the domination victories requirements don't rise as quickly anymore, but you're right, the last couple are near impossible.

[RodneyD]

[*]The maximum Civilization size is now 20% of the players in the game, down from 33% of players.

It now seems to be 20% of the players in civs. This makes it impossible to win the later domination victories. Please fix this.

[NickV]

It now seems to be 20% of the players in civs. This makes it impossible to win the later domination victories. Please fix this.

I think that's intentional, to make it so a civ can't win all the victories in the game by just beating down the same large civ over and over.

[Sarcerok]

I am going to go with the dev team did NOT intentionally mistype the patch notes or mess up the patch You guys are funny.

[Telgard]

They should change the last half of those victories to nations with battle wins or army size.

[NickV]

Imagine there's 10 civs and 10 players in each civ. Then once the domination requirement goes over 10%, there's no more domination victories. This is how it works and how it was meant to work, right?

[dkk]

Yes, rate = quantity. The time between trickles is between 2 and 10 minutes: longer if you have a lot of unused harvests. Palace size improves the productivity of citizens who use the Palace as a 'drop-off' location.

I'm going to chime in as not a big fan of this. Why not just make it constant? If people use harvests more often, they can make bigger and better buildings and will end up with more resources anyway.

[Kent Campbell]

"'Trickle' rate is based on your city's population and your overall productivity in each category as affected by your Wonders, Civics, Great People, and current Era modifiers (i.e. -50% to science during the Dark Ages)"

So then what constitutes "Production"?? Is production defined as the value we see as the harvest value of the house or is it another unlisted value? And do houses influence this trickle amount?

So if we have say 6 population all working as laborers, will the labor value increase faster then the other values each interval of trickle? There is allot that is not clearly defined...it would be nice to know how these things interact.

[BoMbaStiXxX]

He didn't say "Production", he said "productivity", which simply means the bonus/malus that is given in %. How many citizens do what job plays no role at all.

Let's take my current game as extreme example.

I have 25 citizens, all farmers.

I get 79 food per trickle with +340 % food. 79 / (100 + 340) * 100 = 17,95
I get 21 hammers per trickle with +25 % production. 21 / (100 + 25) * 100 = 16,8

I don't think that the 1,15 difference comes from the 25:0 house difference...


Furthermore in the beginning of the game with 6-7 citizens I got roughly 10 food with 0 % bonus, so the number of citizens doesn't influence the quantity in a big way.

Also note that (when I am down to 0 harvests), I get 30 x 79 = 2370 food per hour from trickles and only 1942 food per harvest. Which adds to my point from the "Ask the devs" - thread that I think harvests should be improved in some way.

[Kent Campbell]

He didn't say "Production", he said "productivity", which simply means the bonus/malus that is given in %. How many citizens do what job plays no role at all.

Let's take my current game as extreme example.

I have 25 citizens, all farmers.

I get 79 food per trickle with +340 % food. 79 / (100 + 340) * 100 = 17,95
I get 21 hammers per trickle with +25 % production. 21 / (100 + 25) * 100 = 16,8

I don't think that the 1,15 difference comes from the 25:0 house difference...


Furthermore in the beginning of the game with 6-7 citizens I got roughly 10 food with 0 % bonus, so the number of citizens doesn't influence the quantity in a big way.

Also note that (when I am down to 0 harvests), I get 30 x 79 = 2370 food per hour from trickles and only 1942 food per harvest. Which adds to my point from the "Ask the devs" - thread that I think harvests should be improved in some way.

Well then I must say that that is completely unintuitive. It makes little sense to dedicate people to one role or another with out having some sort of contributing factor from those roles. And really the harvest does not do all that much to help.

Even though this is a social game...the mechanics seem to break any form of convention that is tried and true. It would be nice if a percentage if only say 5% of a house would contribute to the resource they it is working on to the hourly rate. At least then dedicating housing would add some additional purpose and effect.

[илко илиев]

Game 237 , max numbers of players in a civilization is 25 ppl . So eight and ninth domination victory ......................,not playing ,just observing .

[CivWorldLord]

So it means that I was wasting my time on trying to find out a very good location for food/production/etc? I could have gone all science with a library simply next to my cap and houses around, and then buy lots and lots of Great Prophets/Great Builders, while playing constantly to click 'Harvest'.

Here is a question though. Does the Bonus resources (bubbles) have anything to do with the effectiveness of the labor? If not, then even for the bubbles, we can simply have houses changed to workers/food, without worrying about their productivity.

[dkk]

Universities are a significant improvement over libraries, and they work best next to a village green...so it is still worth exploring your terrain, though more so later on.