The new patch has made a bad game even worse

On the higher levels, the game is just unplayable for several reasons:

Ancient combat is now useless, the combination of nerfing horsemen AND increased city defenses and attacks, AND increased city HP regeneration just makes early wars unprofitable. May as well sit at home and build.

This combined with the even more ******ed happy caps has just made conquest of the world impossible. The huge happy penalty for capturing a city, either puppet or raze, which destroys your happiness the next turn, and then weakens your military by 50%

Also, the patch has brought even more misery, in that the handicap AIs can still out tech you, thanks to minimal scientist slots, always has more gold, and can thus always easily beat you to a diplomatic victory and regularly steals your allies throughout the game - meaning city states are now another redundant concept in the game (at least this boosts Mongolia's power of getting rid of the things - oh no, wait you can't, as the unhappiness from even puppeting would ruin you.

So not only has happiness been destroyed already for the reasons mentioned above, now that liberty tree has been nerfed to the point of being useless, and FP nerfed too, big empires are now impossible (unless your an AI where you get +60 happiness on turn 1 for no reason) - there is no way a human can compete.

The diplomacy system puts the last few nails in the coffin. As the AI DOWs and denounces for no good reason, and when one AI denounces you they all do. The explanations only 'explain' what for AI has done, but not why.

In conclusion, I am glad to see the end of horse rushing and ICS, but not to the point where a human can't even compete on Emperor/above.

The game has became a complete joke - its time to boot up Civ IV.

I agree with a lot of that except booting up Civ4, I think I'm just going to switch Civ off completely and keep the fond memories of the past. Time to move on.

Domination being as hard as the other victories is a good thing, people have already figured out how to get massively more science than the A.I. (National college!), and the A.I. doesn't get extra happiness unless you're playing above prince, and not a lot until it's emperor

My advice: calm down, and lower the difficulty a level. I don't see why playing on a higher arbitrarily assigned set of handicap bonuses should make the game somehow more enjoyable.

I've found myself having to go down a difficulty or two since the new patch as well - previously I was winning comfortably on Emperor and moving up to Immortal, which is far higher than I've been able to achieve in previous civs. Thanks to the new patch I'm going back down to King at least (maybe even Prince) until I can get used to the changes and how to use them, at which point I'll probably be able to go up again.

It's got harder, which I suppose could be considered worse if you prefer being able to beat the game at the hardest difficulty levels with ease and having nothing higher to aim for.

Slowpoke said:

Domination being as hard as the other victories is a good thing, people have already figured out how to get massively more science than the A.I. (National college!), and the A.I. doesn't get extra happiness unless you're playing above prince, and not a lot until it's emperor

My advice: calm down, and lower the difficulty a level. I don't see why playing on a higher arbitrarily assigned set of handicap bonuses should make the game somehow more enjoyable.

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Your probably right. I've had lots of fun with Babylon Academy/NC combo.

I guess theres an element of pride involved when it comes to lowering the difficulty.

I used to win on Diety and now struggling on Emperor...

Giving the computer tons of happiness and flaunting tactics which were just heavily penalized for players is just having the AI "play to win" by obvious and extreme cheating.

You don't introduce a series of changes intended to discourage players from doing something, and simultaneously boost the ability of the AI to use *precisely* the same thing (ICS).

kamex said:

I used to win on Diety and now struggling on Emperor...

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You'd hope that - in a patch that had an entire section devoted to the AI - the game would be harder to play.

After I got my first cheesy horseman victory I started to artificially handicap myself anyway, so the nerf only really does what I did to myself in any case.

The game is harder, isn't that what we wanted? Yes, you have to find a new strategy other than horse rush. I am not sure what that is but I am still managing to win.

Significant AI improvements -

Concentration of fire - rather than multiple cities firing at different units with units in cities firiing at others, AI now focuses fire to kill your units, sometimes followed up with a cavalry coup de grace. Very nice.

AI dogpiles more often if you are in the lead.

kamex said:

Ancient combat is now useless, the combination of nerfing horsemen AND increased city defenses and attacks, AND increased city HP regeneration just makes early wars unprofitable. May as well sit at home and build.

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tbh in my deity wins i never used horsemen

regeneration never mattered
when your army is there the few regen does nothing

the point is you were used to get town just by sneaking with a small commando which was a stupid and op tactic, and thnx god it was nerfed

a real army doesnt suffer that much from the new patch, apart the fact you have to build it following common sense and not tanking with horses

building will never work on deity

The fact that people are crying about how a previously very easy victory path is now significantly harder means the patch worked.

AIs don't randomly denounce more often than not. Since you sound like a warmonger however, other AIs will start chain-reacting denouncing you. On my current save, I denounced Mexico which a turn later lead to Germany denouncing them.

So yeah. If the guys you denounce has friends, his friends will be a tee bit angry but more often than not, not enough to drop from Friendly to Neutral unless there wasn't enough keeping you at Friendly in the first place. If you're denounced, everybody who was leaning sorta on one side of the fence will probably denounce you which causes a chain reaction...

And the AI is hellbent on murder now. It'll concentrate fire and as far as I can tell, keep cannons out of your way and keep shooting at you with them. I had to use Cavalry to take out their cannon.

I don't agree ancient combat mechanics are worthless. It might be if you lack Iron but catapults are break cities, it just takes a few more turns than before.

What however is almost worthless is the fact that tech goes so damn fast that you hardly have time for any ancient warfare because by the time you got a couple of catapults up, you are facing Longswordsmen very very soon, if not allready.

skallben said:

I don't agree ancient combat mechanics are worthless. It might be if you lack Iron but catapults are break cities, it just takes a few more turns than before.

What however is almost worthless is the fact that tech goes so damn fast that you hardly have time for any ancient warfare because by the time you got a couple of catapults up, you are facing Longswordsmen very very soon, if not allready.

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It's because the AI is so much better at diplomacy they're signing RA's ASAP when they can. But tech progression has always been weird in CiV. Best solution: Turn off RAs (through Tech edit) and increase Tech costs (through Gamespeeds XML)

Diety should never be a cakewalk. Seems to me that making it so the AI gets fewer handicaps can only be a good thing!

The Great Apple said:

Diety should never be a cakewalk. Seems to me that making it so the AI gets fewer handicaps can only be a good thing!

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My only gripe is the extremely powerful happiness bonuses all the AIs get even on mid-difficulties.

Sonereal said:

It's because the AI is so much better at diplomacy they're signing RA's ASAP when they can. But tech progression has always been weird in CiV. Best solution: Turn off RAs (through Tech edit) and increase Tech costs (through Gamespeeds XML)

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Thanks, yeah I plan to do that. I just wanted a vanilla game with new patch to determine how it's working. But I guess now that AIs use RAs it only shows how terribly overpowered RAs are, especially on big maps.
Another consequence on my own gameplay is that I do not liberate dead civs as they contribute even more to the tech-rush.

kamex said:

I used to win on Diety and now struggling on Emperor...

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The point being? If the game was easy before and is not quite as easy anymore, that surely is a good thing. Swallow your pride and move on, or improve your play so you can beat Deity again.

skallben said:

Thanks, yeah I plan to do that. I just wanted a vanilla game with new patch to determine how it's working. But I guess now that AIs use RAs it only shows how terribly overpowered RAs are, especially on big maps.
Another consequence on my own gameplay is that I do not liberate dead civs as they contribute even more to the tech-rush.

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Me too which is sad because I don't play to win so I end up liberating cities to AIs when I get the chance.

I really can't stand RAs. They're worst than tech trading with tech brokering off in CivIV.

It's horrible on Huge maps. Marathon, Huge map? Expect the Third Atomic War to begin in 1812.

Sonereal said:

The fact that people are crying about how a previously very easy victory path is now significantly harder means the patch worked.

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*THIS* and a whole_lotta_more_evidence can be found in a very specific feature of any Civilization gameplay principle worth the name; Cities.

Sonereal said:

My only gripe is the extremely powerful happiness bonuses all the AIs get even on mid-difficulties.

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Yes, with their new ICS playstyle it's stupid. The nerfs do not apply to AIs at all, they need o adress that.

Sonereal said:

I really can't stand RAs. They're worst than tech trading with tech brokering off in CivIV.

It's horrible on Huge maps. Marathon, Huge map? Expect the Third Atomic War to begin in 1812.

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Yeah I guess for us who played with tech brokering off in IV, it's rough times. How come RAs was are not optional in advanced settings is beyond me. They need to redesign RAs. I think they should have a percentage bonus but with diminishing returns for having several and bonuses for ******ed civs.
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Actually, I think these two issues are the worst things post-patch. Maybe they could build more army, I dunno yet as I played a test game on Emperor, maybe Immortal+ is different. Generally, I think the game is way better with patch.

This is a huge step, the game is much harder and this is a good thing. I now find myself really thinking about which cities I need to conquer, if I need to play defensively, if I need to try for a peaceful victory rather than just zerging the AI with a flood of units.

MUCH IMPROVED. Thank you, Firaxis. I'm enjoying this as a civ strategy game again and not just as a tactical war-game.

There's a few typos though - in the Honor SP tree, Discipline is listed as +15% when it's in fact +10% (correctly listed in the combat calculator). Also, I've seen the combat calculator still display "-33%" for Open Terrain from time to time (mostly, it correctly displays "-10%").