Death of Conventional Strategies? [11/18 Patch Notes]

[Stanislaw]

Updated the OP to reflected changes.

Edit: Anyone know how to edit title? Seems like it doesn't want to change...

 

[Churchdown Yank]

Where is this patch? or more accurately WHEN is this patch

I like pretty much all of these changes... and I'm not that excited playing .621 now.

 

[LDiCesare]

•Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city

They should have ditched global happiness and replaced it with per city happiness. It's going to be a pain to track down now since you won't have the happy/unhappy citizen faces you used to have in civ I-IV. Now where do you have a city that lacks a colosseum? Mmmm... It's a step in the right direction, but the whole happiness system must be replaced to a per-city system with each city showing its current happiness score.

 

[Slowpoke]

Well, that part won't really affect vanilla much. ICS generally involves size 5 cities, so colosseums can be built to mostly full effect even in ICS and even with theology. By the time it does become a problem you have forbidden palace.

 

[Rudster816]

So say a city is population 5. Can it only produce +5 happiness, with -7 happiness (so a net of -2) because of the 5 population\1 city? Or can it provide 13 happiness from buildings and -7 happiness for a net of +5?

If its the latter I would welcome the change, otherwise I would hate it with a passion...

 

[Slowpoke]

It's almost definately the former. But really it's not as bad as you think. You get about +30-40 happiness through start and luxuries, so that supports 15-20 cities with colosseums. With SPs, you won't even notice much.

 

[Monthar]

•Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this). (Added 12/3)

I think this one is a bit extreme, because it doesn't just stop ICS, it also screws earning GA's through happiness and makes it even harder to grow cities, because we'll now be stuck around 0 happiness, if not constantly dropping into unhappiness, no matter what strategy is employed.

Adding these

Reduced effects of Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy (Happiness per city). (Added 12/3)

on top of the happiness capping sounds like they want to force

Unhappiness beyond a certain point breeds rebels within your empire, based on the number of cities a player has. (Added 12/3)

to happen is every game, as quickly as possible.

Liberty branch balance (Settler training bonus now only applies to capital). (Added 12/3)

This changes makes this policy no longer fit the theme of the Liberty tree, but instead should now be in the Tradition tree, which is primarily about boosting the capital. Since the Capital is usually the only city with enough production to build an early wonder in the higher difficulties, this forcing us to build our settlers in the capital for the production bonus, only makes it that much harder for both the initial expansion and building those wonders.

In fact, with this double nerf to the Liberty tree, initial policy and Meritocracy, we're nor limited to only 2 viable trees in the ancient era. Even with the buffs to Tradition, it'll still likely only be good for OCC games. Thus Honor will really be the only one worth taking.

These changes all sound to me like knee-jerk reactions to the ICS strategy that will hinder multiple strategies, including conquest, attempting to grow larger cities and trying to earn GA's for the Darius achievement.

I think a good solution to limit ICS would have been adding an unhappiness penalty for crowding. Such as, +0.1 unhappiness per workable tile of overlap in each city that has overlapping tiles. So for every 10 tiles overlapping that's +1 unhappiness per city involved, so +2 total unhappiness if it's just 2 cities, +3 if it's 3 cities sharign the tile, etc. Since a tight ICS grid has all but the center 6 tiles overlapping, we'd have a huge penalty rather quickly. I believe that means there's up to 30 tiles of overlap in each city, so a potential max of +3 unhappiness per city in a tight ICS grid, due to overcrowding. This could apply only to those tiles that can be worked, so a mountain tile that's shared by multiple cities would not incur this penalty.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Now where do you have a city that lacks a colosseum? Mmmm...

Oh well, you can already get such info simply by clicking on the Economy slot in DiploCorner that popups the cities list with a happiness tab where numbers are crunched for your pleasure & deductive acrobatics.

 

[Rittmeyer]

Amazing how they have absolutely no shame in telling everyone they sold the game before it was ready to be played.

Pretty fair that companies are facing a completely unwinnable dispute against piracy.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I think this one is a bit extreme, because it doesn't just stop ICS, it also screws earning GA's through happiness and makes it even harder to grow cities, because we'll now be stuck around 0 happiness, if not constantly dropping into unhappiness, no matter what strategy is employed.

It's going to force you to take Happiness social policies in order to expand. Functionally, the change is going to put a hard cap on the degree to which you can expand horizontally until you unlock Happiness SPs. That doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me. I don't think it's great game design to have the expansion cap determined by the luxury lotto, but that's a persistent problem with the present design.

I am a little concerned about the impact on early GAs. Best guess is that the optimal response will be buy luxuries like mad, stockpile Happiness to near the cap, settle second wave cities simultaneously and have them grow to size 2 as the GA begins.

The other thing to notice is that Freedom is now the single most important SP in the game.

This changes makes this policy no longer fit the theme of the Liberty tree, but instead should now be in the Tradition tree, which is primarily about boosting the capital. Since the Capital is usually the only city with enough production to build an early wonder in the higher difficulties, this forcing us to build our settlers in the capital for the production bonus, only makes it that much harder for both the initial expansion and building those wonders.

Which means that the designers have introduced a meaningful tradeoff. You can build Wonders or expand horizontally, but not both. This is a smaller nerf to the Liberty tree than you might think. The Capital usually produces Settlers much faster than satellite cities due to Maritime anyway, so most of your early cities are produced by the capital. You're looking at it taking a few more turns for a third of your first wave cities to go up. That's not a big change.

Where it hurts is in subsequent expansion waves, and that's not such a bad thing.

In fact, with this double nerf to the Liberty tree, initial policy and Meritocracy, we're nor limited to only 2 viable trees in the ancient era. Even with the buffs to Tradition, it'll still likely only be good for OCC games. Thus Honor will really be the only one worth taking.

I'd like to see the Meritocracy nerf before I declare traditional ICS dead. Note that impure ICS strategies that make use of some ICS principles are very much alive.

 

[Monthar]

The other thing to notice is that Freedom is now the single most important SP in the game.

Agreed and I meant to mention this in my previous post, but forgot to.

Which means that the designers have introduced a meaningful tradeoff. You can build Wonders or expand horizontally, but not both. This is a smaller nerf to the Liberty tree than you might think. The Capital usually produces Settlers much faster than satellite cities due to Maritime anyway, so most of your early cities are produced by the capital. You're looking at it taking a few more turns for a third of your first wave cities to go up. That's not a big change.

Where it hurts is in subsequent expansion waves, and that's not such a bad thing.

My point is that the Liberty tree is meant to effect multiple cities, while the Tradition tree is meant to boost just the capital. As you pointed out, the other cities have a harder time producing settlers than the capital as it is, thus they have a greater need of this boost than the capital does, if only to bring them up the par with the capital's non-boosted rate.

I'd like to see the Meritocracy nerf before I declare traditional ICS dead. Note that impure ICS strategies that make use of some ICS principles are very much alive.

Considering this only added 1 happiness per city, which effectively reduced the per city unhappiness from 2 to 1 and did not count the capital. It was already not as good as later policies at reducing the unhappiness, such as the previously mentioned Freedom. Especially when you consider that this policy has a financial cost associated with it that other happiness boosting and unhappiness reducing policies do not have.

Also consider the fact that they are reducing the bonus from the Forbidden Palace WW, but not the identical bonus from the Planned Economy policy. Wouldn't it have been better to reduce this policy's bonus instead of Meritocracy's bonus? It'd give the same net effect of reducing ICS, without hindering the early GA's or the growth potential of the cities. After all that +1 happiness meant +1 citizen per city. While FP and PF both just meant twice the cities.

 

[vranasm]

I don't see any improvements for gameplay, just bunch of heavy nerfs to oversights.
Doesn't seem like fun patch for me, I understand this approach in MMO games, where always boosting to get balance heads no where, don't understand it in SP games like Civ.

Lately i tried some games with smaller number of cities then ICS...and well that's really boring.
I would like to be optimum for 1AD around 10 cities just like in CIV not some heavyforced 3 cities designed hard cap (we will eventually get there trust me with the way devs handle balance in CiV).

Btw it's nice they put new national wonders in game, but with the limitation "you have to have prerequisite everywhere" means for me that they are uninteresting and will probably never build them (yeah I know I should have only 3 cities...)

I could go on, but the devs design of "we need small numbers of everything" is boring for me and nerfing things that provide me sometimes with fun will not fix it.

 

[Martin Alvito]

My point is that the Liberty tree is meant to effect multiple cities, while the Tradition tree is meant to boost just the capital. As you pointed out, the other cities have a harder time producing settlers than the capital as it is, thus they have a greater need of this boost than the capital does, if only to bring them up the par with the capital's non-boosted rate.

Good game design trumps flavor. If the mechanic doesn't work, and this nerf solves the problem, then I'm all for it.

Also consider the fact that they are reducing the bonus from the Forbidden Palace WW, but not the identical bonus from the Planned Economy policy. Wouldn't it have been better to reduce this policy's bonus instead of Meritocracy's bonus? It'd give the same net effect of reducing ICS, without hindering the early GA's or the growth potential of the cities. After all that +1 happiness meant +1 citizen per city. While FP and PF both just meant twice the cities.

The problem with Meritocracy has always been when it arrives. The early Happiness buff means that you can support several extra cities before capping out. Since the growth rate is exponential, this translates into a much larger empire after you lift the Happiness cap via Colosseums.

Planned has its own highly abusable problems that this patch is not addressing, but it had no effect on ICS gameplay because an ICS will never acquire the extra three policies needed to unlock it.

 

[alpaca]

Planned has its own highly abusable problems that this patch is not addressing, but it had no effect on ICS gameplay because an ICS will never acquire the extra three policies needed to unlock it.

Well the late ICS approach did but it was certainly weaker. With the new patch and no saving up SPs it's probably not very feasible, anyways.

 

[Martin Alvito]

With the new patch and no saving up SPs it's probably not very feasible, anyways.

That change is now optional.

 

[alpaca]

That change is now optional.

I know, but standard settings have it, and that is what we usually talk about. Otherwise we could also talk about how OCC culture victory is quite hard to get before the game end time if you play without cultural CS or how easy it is to get luxuries with abundant resources

 

[LordTC]

Did India just become the best ICSer since they are the only Civ that can have a 0 unhappiness city? (The rest can cover just the population unhappiness but not the -2 from the city?)

 

[Buccaneer]

I know, but standard settings have it, and that is what we usually talk about. Otherwise we could also talk about how OCC culture victory is quite hard to get before the game end time if you play without cultural CS or how easy it is to get luxuries with abundant resources

Or how easy it becomes to build bigger cities with bigger resources yields, with more buildings, more wonders, more everything.

 

[alpaca]

Did India just become the best ICSer since they are the only Civ that can have a 0 unhappiness city? (The rest can cover just the population unhappiness but not the -2 from the city?)

Good thinking, you smell bug potential. Theocracy might have a similar effect. Definitely something to look out for as the patchlog specifically talked about "can't provide more happiness than they have population" rather than "can't provide more happiness than they produce unhappiness from population"

I think other civs can still have 0 unhappiness cities because of SPs like Freedom, though.

 

[LordTC]

Good thinking, you smell bug potential. Theocracy might have a similar effect. Definitely something to look out for as the patchlog specifically talked about "can't provide more happiness than they have population" rather than "can't provide more happiness than they produce unhappiness from population"

I think other civs can still have 0 unhappiness cities because of SPs like Freedom, though.

I guess it depends a lot on modes, if you are allowed to save up SPs then there is a lot of merit to getting some better options, of course Babylon's special ability might be ahead of the other options which would allow you to sacrifice some qualiy SPs for the extra GSs.

I'm still suprised they are nerfing the settler reduction though.. I always found that happiness was the bigger issue than settler construction time. Maybe if the Maritime nerfs are heavy enough, or maybe because it unbalances lower difficulty levels?