10 Fixes Needed for the Fall Patch

Jatta Pake

Warlord
Joined
Sep 24, 2007
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These are the ten fixes needed for the Fall Patch. Period.

10. Piety Opener Should Provide Culture - Tradition, Liberty, and Honor openers all provide culture. Piety opener should also provide culture making it a more useful tree to open early in the game.

9. Improve Denmark - The Denmark unique unit "Ski Infantry" is useless, stupid, and a complete waste. It should be replaced with a "Viking Longboat" melee naval unit that has a bonus vs. cities and a bonus with amount of gold generated from attacking a city. Coastal cities should be terrified of Viking invasions.

8. Lower City Attack Strength When No Melee Units Are Garrisoned - Cities should be easier to conquer if they have no defenders or have only ranged defenders. This will increase early warfare and buff the Honor policy.

7. Add New Luxuries and New Bonuses - Civs should be encouraged to settle far flung colonies for new luxuries and bonuses. Where are Tea, Coffee, Apples, Mangos, Rice, and Corn? More luxuries and bonuses will buff Wide players.

6. Make AI Calculate 1 to 1 Luxury Trades for "We Love The King Day" Bonuses - I have Pearl but I need Silk for a WLTKD. Alex has Silk but needs Pearl for a WLTKD. Even trade is clearly reasonable if we are Friendly with each other.

5. Lake Victoria Is Not A Mountain - Seriously. C'mon. This is just ...

4. Ending Unit Turn On Top of Enemy Caravan Should Auto Plunder - I shouldn't be required to station a unit one hex in front of the caravan or land on a caravan with an extra movement point to plunder the trade route. If the trade route auto plunders when a caravan runs into a unit, it should auto plunder if I end a unit's turn on top of an enemy caravan.

3. Archeological Digs Shouldn't Destroy Great Person Improvements - Wonderful. My Academy was unknowingly built on an ancient artifact. Now I have to keep an Archeologist perma placed on top of my Academy or the AI will destroy it.

2. Add More World Congress Abilities - We need more interesting choices with the World Congress. How about forcing the liberation of a City State or dead civ city? How about banning a certain unit type? How about buffs to trade routes, unit abilities, or buildings?

1. Improve Diplomats and Improve Spies - Diplomats should boost trade offers beyond World Congress voting. You should be able to trade tech, buy defensive agreements, and trade resource bonuses. Also, the AI should understand how to use Diplomats to buy World Congress votes. All foreign diplomat locations should be visible to the player. Spies should be able to assassinate Diplomats, conduct attacks on cities, and give bonuses to military units attacking the city.
 
10. Agreed, though small. Culture is too crucial early-game to willingly skip out on it. +1 Culture per Shrine, even?

9. Agreed. Even if there actually is such a thing as "Ski Infantry", it's dumb and does Denmark no favors.

8. Neutral. Though I do like the idea of there being a benefit to garrisoning with a melee unit instead of a ranged unit.

7. Agreed. More luxuries are always fun.

6. I don't see why not.

5. Yyyyyyyyyyy.... es.

4. I agree that plundering caravans in general seems more difficult for me than it seems to be for the AI.

3. Agreed. This is stupid.

2. Ooooomg agreed. Should just be the Ban Luxury Congress if the human happens to not control it.

1. Neutral. Would be nice, but sounds like a lot of work to do I guess.
 
All good suggestions, especially 10 and 3... 7 would be cool but unlikely
 
10) Agree entirely. Opening piety is a huge trap right now.
9) Yes
8) Garrisoning a unit does increase city strength significantly already, even if you don't have the tradition policy. Not sure this is necessary, although I would like a buff to the honor tree early to give a little gold and happiness for military stuff.
7) That would be pretty cool.
6) It's a known fact that every AI is an absolutely insane leader with no regards for things like efficiency or mutual benefit. Still, yeah... Sounds reasonable. Also, I want to give the AI a concept of a loan, and flat gold should be more valuable than gpt for them.
5) Yeah...
4) This is reasonable.
3) Sounds reasonable. I find the concept of an archeological team going to the ancient Babylonian academy founded several thousand years ago and digging up the historic site to find something else a little strange.
2) Not really sure about the justification to ban a certain unit type would be other than nukes. Everything else sounds reasonable though. Liberating dead civs through politics would be cool.
1) The AI does use diplomats at times to buy world congress votes, but they don't usually come forward to you about it (if you ask what will make this deal work, sometimes I've seen me voting on a world congress issue as part of it). I feel like what you're saying would be a pretty dramatic overhaul of spies and diplomats, and while it could use improving, I don't know exactly how all that would work.


Other things I want
1) Better Social Policy Balance - Basically, all useless social policies should be changed to a useful social policy. Religious tolerance, free great admiral, and the +2 gold per land trade route especially. These trees aren't bad overall, but the fact that they have social policies that are incredibly useless make them worse than other trees no matter what civ you are playing.

2) Only the top 3 delegate receivers are eligible to host the world congress - This would force more of a vote, as opposed to you deciding which powerful civ should host it. It also means that you would need decent ai relations to host it yourself, and would provide both positive and negative diplo modifiers if you aren't in the top 3 choices.

3) The host chooses who else can make a proposal, and you can't choose the same second civ twice in a row - This goes along with the previous one, and makes hosting and AI relations more meaningful in the world congress. It would also provide some diplomatic modifiers.

4) Diplomatic victory needs to be pushed back - There are lots of ways this could be accomplished, but right now diplo victory happens way before science victory is possible and cultural victory is relevant. One way could be to make "create UN" either a wonder (unlocked at globalization) or a world congress proposal in itself (unlocked in info era). I like it as a world congress proposal because while it seems like winning a diplo victory twice, the challenges are actually very different. In the UN world congress proposal, you don't need all the city states, you just need some, and you can use diplomats to get its passage. This also works with the previous rule because you either need to host the world congress or be friends with the person who's hosting the world congress to get this proposal in play, which makes AI relations important for diplo victory. Also, there's another world congress proposal that will be distracting others, and if an ai has the freedom ideology, and he wants to vote against make UN and against ideology: order, he needs to choose what's more important, which makes the vote count lesser for this proposal. The world leader proposal itself can be unchanged, but getting there is now the interesting part of a diplo victory.
 
re: #10: Promoted diplomats should get slightly reduced "introduction" times, allowing a civilization with more advanced spy/diplomatic personnel to better manipulate the World Congress than one with poor personnel development.

re: #5: I have a gripe in general with natural wonders, mountains, and related building requirements. If I have a mountain in the third ring of my city and within my city limits, I consider it to be a part of my city. It is there physically, it is there geographically, it is there in some abstract/unmeasurable cultural way. There is no valid reason why I shouldn't be able to put an observatory on it, or a nice Bavarian castle, etc.

And regarding #7: yes, especially for coffee and tea. Wars have been fought over these lovely items. Heck, I'd love to see civs call me up and say "Hand over the tea, or we'll take it by force!" - with me being able to answer, "Hmm.. Okay. Have some tea.." or "*sips* Very well then. Come and take it, fiends!"
 
Disagree about Denmark. Vikings didn't capture cities, they raided & pillaged and they are very good at this. Actually I think they got a pretty nice boost in BNW since the diplo penalties for warmongering are tied to city capturing. you can pillage the crap out of all your neighbors, steal their workers, etc then make peace and watch your economy shoot ahead...

otherwise good ideas.
 
10) Agree entirely. Opening piety is a huge trap right now.
9) Yes
8) Garrisoning a unit does increase city strength significantly already, even if you don't have the tradition policy. Not sure this is necessary, although I would like a buff to the honor tree early to give a little gold and happiness for military stuff.
7) That would be pretty cool.
6) It's a known fact that every AI is an absolutely insane leader with no regards for things like efficiency or mutual benefit. Still, yeah... Sounds reasonable. Also, I want to give the AI a concept of a loan, and flat gold should be more valuable than gpt for them.
5) Yeah...
4) This is reasonable.
3) Sounds reasonable. I find the concept of an archeological team going to the ancient Babylonian academy founded several thousand years ago and digging up the historic site to find something else a little strange.
2) Not really sure about the justification to ban a certain unit type would be other than nukes. Everything else sounds reasonable though. Liberating dead civs through politics would be cool.
1) The AI does use diplomats at times to buy world congress votes, but they don't usually come forward to you about it (if you ask what will make this deal work, sometimes I've seen me voting on a world congress issue as part of it). I feel like what you're saying would be a pretty dramatic overhaul of spies and diplomats, and while it could use improving, I don't know exactly how all that would work.


Other things I want
1) Better Social Policy Balance - Basically, all useless social policies should be changed to a useful social policy. Religious tolerance, free great admiral, and the +2 gold per land trade route especially. These trees aren't bad overall, but the fact that they have social policies that are incredibly useless make them worse than other trees no matter what civ you are playing.

2) Only the top 3 delegate receivers are eligible to host the world congress - This would force more of a vote, as opposed to you deciding which powerful civ should host it. It also means that you would need decent ai relations to host it yourself, and would provide both positive and negative diplo modifiers if you aren't in the top 3 choices.

3) The host chooses who else can make a proposal, and you can't choose the same second civ twice in a row - This goes along with the previous one, and makes hosting and AI relations more meaningful in the world congress. It would also provide some diplomatic modifiers.

4) Diplomatic victory needs to be pushed back - There are lots of ways this could be accomplished, but right now diplo victory happens way before science victory is possible and cultural victory is relevant. One way could be to make "create UN" either a wonder (unlocked at globalization) or a world congress proposal in itself (unlocked in info era). I like it as a world congress proposal because while it seems like winning a diplo victory twice, the challenges are actually very different. In the UN world congress proposal, you don't need all the city states, you just need some, and you can use diplomats to get its passage. This also works with the previous rule because you either need to host the world congress or be friends with the person who's hosting the world congress to get this proposal in play, which makes AI relations important for diplo victory. Also, there's another world congress proposal that will be distracting others, and if an ai has the freedom ideology, and he wants to vote against make UN and against ideology: order, he needs to choose what's more important, which makes the vote count lesser for this proposal. The world leader proposal itself can be unchanged, but getting there is now the interesting part of a diplo victory.

All are very good suggestions! Only one I disagree with is the one about the host deciding who will make the other proposel. Rivalling the host civ in diplomacy (by having alot of deligates too) would nearly be impossible since the host would never pick you. meaning you are derived from all power even though you invested heavily in getting all those deligates
 
Add limited Aircraft stacking and unlimited Civilian stacking to this list and I'd be a happy camper. (Make only one Worker eligible for improving things if this makes some people cry 'imbalanced!' The idea is to let me manage my empire and cease playing traffic cop...)
 
Don't care abuot Denmark, agree with the rest.
I'd also like to add that the AI should be smarter about the World Congress. Right now they mostly make useless proposals -like proposing a world religion when that religion is only present in their cities- or are obsessed with embargoes. My friend will propose to ban a luxury that I have the monopoly on and be pissed that I voted against it.
Religious Tolerance also needs a change. It's completely useless eight out of ten times.
 
All are very good suggestions! Only one I disagree with is the one about the host deciding who will make the other proposel. Rivalling the host civ in diplomacy (by having alot of deligates too) would nearly be impossible since the host would never pick you. meaning you are derived from all power even though you invested heavily in getting all those deligates

Maybe we could counter this by having new host sessions every 2 regular proposal sessions after the info age or something? This would make it so you're never irreversibly screwed over in the world congress. The idea is that this is supposed to make diplo victory hard to win and world congress power hard to attain without good AI relations and without messing up the city states role in world congress power. I've had plenty of games where the world congress diplo leader aside from me was very good friends with me, although the proposal does give the host a ton of power.
 
2) Only the top 3 delegate receivers are eligible to host the world congress - This would force more of a vote, as opposed to you deciding which powerful civ should host it. It also means that you would need decent ai relations to host it yourself, and would provide both positive and negative diplo modifiers if you aren't in the top 3 choices

Wow, this is a really good solution to the current "everyone votes for themselves" issue. Something similar would also be good for the victory condition, as long as the necessary votes for victory was upped to balance it.
 
Add limited Aircraft stacking and unlimited Civilian stacking to this list and I'd be a happy camper. (Make only one Worker eligible for improving things if this makes some people cry 'imbalanced!' The idea is to let me manage my empire and cease playing traffic cop...)

Yes.

Also, removing this problem would be nice:
"La Venta wants a road!"
Me: ok, La Venta, I'll give you a road.
(sees 2 military units on the only 2 land hexes La Venta owns)
Me: Well... La Venta, we have a problem.
 
Wow, this is a really good solution to the current "everyone votes for themselves" issue. Something similar would also be good for the victory condition, as long as the necessary votes for victory was upped to balance it.

I'm not a fan of applying this solution to diplo victory, because I don't like that I can tactically vote to not give Alexander diplo victory, but Alex won't do the same with me. I've given one suggestion on there that I think would work quite nicely for diplo victory, but just pushing the victory back and upping the total number of votes would work too.
 
It sounds good, except for "trading techs".

That used to be über-annoying when you didn't disable that feature (the AI either didn't want to trade at all if you were slightly behind - but didn't stop trading its techs between AI for all that - and when you were ahead they started virtually giving their techs to one another even though they were working on wonders etc. and you ended up with only you and one-two tech runaways in the lead and a big pack of civs all at the same level tech level not far behind you, even though many civs should have been way behind). It spoiled the benefits of tech-ing well, and now that there are benefits for changing eras, it would be even more annoying that civ that don't focus on science get many techs for free while building their armies... I much prefer the RA of CiV

Diplomats could lower the cost of a RA (easier to negotiate a good deal with the help of a diplomat who has a relation to the ruler), or boost it (help from the diplomats made the coordination of the work more efficient) or else speed their completion by a number of turns again because coordination of the team was made more efficient by the diplomatic corps. You could eventually have half the bonus for a diplomat in a capital and half the bonus if an AI has one in yours, and this would be cumulative.
 
Oh yeah, another one that I just remembered: generic Great Works for those occasions when the named ones run out. Just try playing a World Map with 20+ civs and you will see what I mean... How they let this happen is quite the head-scratcher tbh. Do they never play test with games with 8+ players?
 
#3) is there no option to gripe at an AI about your cultural heritage if he's digging in your borders? there really should be.
 
Agree with a few of these but the first two are odd to me:

10. Piety Opener Should Provide Culture - Tradition, Liberty, and Honor openers all provide culture. Piety opener should also provide culture making it a more useful tree to open early in the game.
There's a lot of argument about many of the policy trees so it's odd you pick on just Piety. Basically, Tradition is overpowered relative to all of the trees until, like, Rationalism. Regardless of your strategy, filling Trad is better most of the time, with Liberty useful in some situations and Honor and Piety very rarely worth taking. As to your specific complaint, Honor doesn't provide immediate culture the same way Trad and Lib do; you've gotta work for that culture. Piety does the same thing. By providing more/faster faith, you can pick a pantheon belief that increases culture, potentially very significantly. I played a game as Attila once where opening God of the Open Sky was generating something like +10 culture.

9. Improve Denmark - The Denmark unique unit "Ski Infantry" is useless, stupid, and a complete waste. It should be replaced with a "Viking Longboat" melee naval unit that has a bonus vs. cities and a bonus with amount of gold generated from attacking a city. Coastal cities should be terrified of Viking invasions.
Again, why pick on Denmark? Plenty of Civs suck and are underpowered. The Axis powers, Germany and Japan, typically rank worst when you ask high-level players about this sort of thing. Denmark doesn't fare well, but it's rarely in the bottom 5.

Between the Berserker and Viking Fury, I'd actually say the traits of Viking raiders are represented incredibly well. The ability to move/attack upon disembarking and free pillages really does make them incredible coastal raiders.

Don't need a longships combat unit; embarked Danish units look like longships, which is accurate. Longships were troop transports, not combat craft. Their big tactical advantage was their shallow draft, which allowed them to deliver troops directly from open waters to beaches without having to rely on rafts. In that sense, the Viking Fury UA perfectly reflects the use of longships.

I agree ski infantry are dumb. If you want to nix 'em I'd suggest a Unique that reflects Denmark's current status: a successful mixed economy with a very free labor market but a public sector that provides so many benefits that the Danes are considered the happiest people in the world. Maybe a Public School or Hospital replacement that provides Happiness.

It kinda makes sense that Denmark is not that powerful as a Civ, because being incredible coastal raiders is just not a good basis on which to become a world superpower.

I guess if there's a particular problem with Denmark, it's that the AI has absolutely no idea how to use it.
 
Enemy trade routes are auto-plundered when you end a turn on top of them. I was just playing a game where Indonesia would not stop declaring war on me, but their only passage for sending out sea trade routes was through a channel/canal which was in my territory. I kept a Privateer in that canal the entire war, and it kept on saying that I had gained gold from pillaged trade routes, despite never actually pressing the pillage button.
 
How is getting a second pantheon belief not a godly policy? Human player doesn't always get desert folklore you know.
 
they should fix the wonders, everytime i build oracle, pyramids and others it appears on water.
 
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