10 Fixes Needed for the Fall Patch

Denmark's not BAD, per se, but yes, it can be a bit uninteresting. They're excellent at what they're designed to do: raid and pillage, and yes, sending a load of Berserkers out to just completely get rid of everyone's tile improvements can be effective, but it's not exactly all that interesting. One thing I do think people ignore is how well the Ski Infantry pairs up with this. Any Berserkers you still have from earlier in the game can upgrade into them and keep the Amphibious promotion, and with that exploit of embarkment movement staying on the unit when it returns to land, Ski Infantry are FAST, and can potentially move along a lot of terrain like it was Railroaded, while pillaging loads of tiles in one turn. But eh, I honestly think a proper Norway civ with that as its unique and the Stave Church for a UB would be best, I do believe each civ should just have only one UU, and Denmark should get a building or improvement in its place. They don't need a Longboat, the UA already represents Longboats as a fast, efficient medieval troop transport: they could manever quickly across seas and could land easily on beaches. That's all represented by the no-cost, faster embarkment.

As I said, they're not the best civ, but their abilities definitely well represent the medieval blitzkrieg tactics the Vikings were so fond of. Either they should get a modern UB to represent their status as a solid, progressive nation in the world today (I do like the idea of a Hospital/Medical Lab replacement), or just go full Viking and have like a Runestone UI that gives Culture/Faith and additional production to Melee units. I like that second idea a bit more, unique improvements are always nice for flavoring a civ well.
 
rexman07 said:
[*]AI should value lump sum gold more than gold per turn, and not agree to give the player a zero-interest loan
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Christ, yes. People have raised a lot of issues in this thread that are absolutely worth looking into, but most of them are pretty minor. This is one of three issues (two of which nobody's even mentioned yet) that allow borderline exploitative behavior and severely unbalance the game.

1) Zero-interest loans. The game has this perfectly backwards, so much so that I think it must've been a coding slip-up: if you try to give the AI a lump-sum loan, they'll never offer you enough gpt to make it worthwhile. It's utterly pointless. On the other hand, friendly AIs will give you all their money at a flat rate of 30 :c5gold: for 1 gpt. Once you've got a few trade routes going, money becomes trivial. You can buy everything you want all game long—buy Markets, buy Cargo Ships, get more gpt, take out more loans, ad infinitum. Breathtakingly bad design. If you could make a long-term profit by loaning out your cash reserves, some interesting strategy might result. Being able to automatically turn every gpt you have into 30 :c5gold: is just stupid.

2) Pledging to protect city-states. More shockingly bad design. Pledge to protect every CS you meet, take Consulates, and bam, you're friends with everybody forever. No happiness problems, loads of food in the capital, piles of culture and faith, free units. It makes Consulates a must-have policy when, otherwise, the policy trees are about as balanced as they've ever been. It also trivializes Papal Primacy, which could be an interesting belief but is weak on the face of it and just pathetic compared to pledging. Whereas Papal Primacy actually requires some work—your missionaries have to keep your religion strong—pledging to protect is a no-skill, fire-and-forget solution. There's no downside for doing it. The diplo penalty for "protecting" your CS friends is trivial; you can slap an AI on the wrist twenty times in a game and still make one DoF after another. And there's no penalty at all for completely failing to protect a CS—if a CS under your protection is captured by another civ, you should lose influence with every other CS you pledged to protect. That, or they should just take the "pledge to protect" button out of the game entirely.

3) Worker-stealing. Yeah, people have argued about this ad nauseam. At the end of the day, it's got to go. It has a grossly oversized impact on the course of the game—stealing a very early worker or two can push your victory up by dozens of turns. AI civs should defend their workers better; city-states should defend their workers (period). Additionally, declaring war on a CS should have more serious ramifications—you should be locked into war for five or ten turns and possibly take a permanent influence resting point hit with that CS. The devs might also consider making workers cheaper and balancing the rest of the game around the expectation that players will have more workers earlier.

I do all this stuff, of course. I take advantage of those stupid loans every single time I play, the pledge to protect/Consulates thing 90% of the time, and worker-stealing fairly often as well. I'd be crazy not to! They all make the game easier, but they do it in a very unsatisfying way. None of them requires much skill (pledging to protect takes none whatsoever), none of them adds any strategic depth to the game. They're all very mechanistic, exploitative tricks, and I think these should be the first three targets for any balance patch.
 
wigwam said:
Christ, yes. People have raised a lot of issues in this thread that are absolutely worth looking into, but most of them are pretty minor. This is one of three issues (two of which nobody's even mentioned yet) that allow borderline exploitative behavior and severely unbalance the game.

1) Zero-interest loans. The game has this perfectly backwards, so much so that I think it must've been a coding slip-up: if you try to give the AI a lump-sum loan, they'll never offer you enough gpt to make it worthwhile. It's utterly pointless. On the other hand, friendly AIs will give you all their money at a flat rate of 30 :c5gold: for 1 gpt. Once you've got a few trade routes going, money becomes trivial. You can buy everything you want all game long—buy Markets, buy Cargo Ships, get more gpt, take out more loans, ad infinitum. Breathtakingly bad design. If you could make a long-term profit by loaning out your cash reserves, some interesting strategy might result. Being able to automatically turn every gpt you have into 30 :c5gold: is just stupid.

2) Pledging to protect city-states. More shockingly bad design. Pledge to protect every CS you meet, take Consulates, and bam, you're friends with everybody forever. No happiness problems, loads of food in the capital, piles of culture and faith, free units. It makes Consulates a must-have policy when, otherwise, the policy trees are about as balanced as they've ever been. It also trivializes Papal Primacy, which could be an interesting belief but is weak on the face of it and just pathetic compared to pledging. Whereas Papal Primacy actually requires some work—your missionaries have to keep your religion strong—pledging to protect is a no-skill, fire-and-forget solution. There's no downside for doing it. The diplo penalty for "protecting" your CS friends is trivial; you can slap an AI on the wrist twenty times in a game and still make one DoF after another. And there's no penalty at all for completely failing to protect a CS—if a CS under your protection is captured by another civ, you should lose influence with every other CS you pledged to protect. That, or they should just take the "pledge to protect" button out of the game entirely.

3) Worker-stealing. Yeah, people have argued about this ad nauseam. At the end of the day, it's got to go. It has a grossly oversized impact on the course of the game—stealing a very early worker or two can push your victory up by dozens of turns. AI civs should defend their workers better; city-states should defend their workers (period). Additionally, declaring war on a CS should have more serious ramifications—you should be locked into war for five or ten turns and possibly take a permanent influence resting point hit with that CS. The devs might also consider making workers cheaper and balancing the rest of the game around the expectation that players will have more workers earlier.

I do all this stuff, of course. I take advantage of those stupid loans every single time I play, the pledge to protect/Consulates thing 90% of the time, and worker-stealing fairly often as well. I'd be crazy not to! They all make the game easier, but they do it in a very unsatisfying way. None of them requires much skill (pledging to protect takes none whatsoever), none of them adds any strategic depth to the game. They're all very mechanistic, exploitative tricks, and I think these should be the first three targets for any balance patch.
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Yes, yes, and yes! I think patronage/consulates would still be worth taking if pledge to protect increased resting point by 9. It would feel like trolling, but it would force you to at least work a little for these friends, and wouldn't really change full patronage as a viable option.

If you don't want to change the pledge to protect option, you could also make demanding tribute carry more significant diplo modifiers with the AI. This would still make the tactic awesome in multiplayer, but considering Shaka doesn't actually care what I think when he bullies all my city state allies, it really doesn't give me much deterrence from protecting those that I actually can't protect.
 
redwings1340 said:
Yes, yes, and yes! I think patronage/consulates would still be worth taking if pledge to protect increased resting point by 9. It would feel like trolling, but it would force you to at least work a little for these friends, and wouldn't really change full patronage as a viable option.
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Hahaha. I love it. [trollface]
 
Good suggestions, I agree with all 10 of them.
 
redwings1340 said:
Yes, yes, and yes! I think patronage/consulates would still be worth taking if pledge to protect increased resting point by 9. It would feel like trolling, but it would force you to at least work a little for these friends, and wouldn't really change full patronage as a viable option.
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Why not do this:
Pledging to Protect - increases influence by 5,
Consulates - increases influence by 10,
Papal Primacy Belief - increases influence by 15.

Want to be friends with all City-States? Better get your religion spread to 'em!
 
Wigwam really nailed it. Those are 3 major issues. In addition, some re-coding of the AI is needed with regard to social policy bias and victory condition bias. It seems that in almost every game now the vast majority of AI focus on Tradition and Piety and/or Aesthetics. Maybe one of them on a standard map will take Honor (e.g., Shaka) or Liberty (usually just to troll you to keep you from getting the Pyramids) or Patronage (e.g., Greece), but it is rare. Also, it is rare to see AI go for Rationalism later. For example, why the heck does Babylon always turtle and go for early Piety now when they are not a religion-focused civ? They should be focused on a science victory. Some of the current AI behavior is just mind-boggling, even more so than pre-BNW.

The biggest problem with the majority of AI acting the same now is that it makes all of your games seem basically the same, particularly when it is also hard for the player to break out of the Tradition - Patronage (Consulates) - Rationalism mode that is so obviously better than any other choice. The only slight differences between games are due to the map.

Finally, the warmonger penalty needs to be reduced for completely taking out a civ when that civ was the initial aggressor. For example, if Shaka forward settles his second city in my face and then declares on me I should be able to take that city and then his capital without having to wait for him to settle a third city somewhere. The steep penalty should be retained if the player is the original aggressor.
 
I am totally for your Viking Longboat idea. It would go nicely with their Berserker, making the Danish a force to be reckoned with in the Middle Ages. On an archipelago map, one could launch devastatingly fast and effective attacks against enemy coastal cities. And that Lake Victoria thingy is a bit silly too.
 
Jatta Pake said:
9. Improve Denmark -
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I will say that one advantage for Denmark is it's one of few civs where the same unit can get the promotions for both unit types.

IE. you could make a warrior, promote him to Berzerker, and then promote the Berzerker to a Ski Infantry. Thereby getting a single unit with the powers of both.

I like to build a core of super high quality armies that I don't allow to die, and use them as my "special forces" units.


8. Lower City Attack Strength When No Melee Units Are Garrisoned
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I don't really agree with this one. Maybe increase city strength by 4 or something, but it's really a pain to have to bother keeping units in all of your cities.

Not having to deal with that is one of my favorite differences between Civ 5 and Civ 4.

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.
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Yeah.

Even if all they did was recolor old tile models. (So they don't have to lay out new art.)


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?
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I think proposing "Embargo City States" should immediately inflict - 50 influence with all city states.

Voting for it should inflict -20 influence, at least.


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.
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Definitely agree with Trade Tech!! That would make them actually useful. Maybe the trade could still require a number of turns to complete, so civs don't pair off and consolidate techs too fast.


As far as assassinating diplomats...... erk. I don't think diplomats get assassinated very often in the real world.
 
wigwam said:
2) Pledging to protect city-states. More shockingly bad design. Pledge to protect every CS you meet, take Consulates, and bam, you're friends with everybody forever. No happiness problems, loads of food in the capital, piles of culture and faith, free units. It makes Consulates a must-have policy when, otherwise, the policy trees are about as balanced as they've ever been. It also trivializes Papal Primacy, which could be an interesting belief but is weak on the face of it and just pathetic compared to pledging. Whereas Papal Primacy actually requires some work—your missionaries have to keep your religion strong—pledging to protect is a no-skill, fire-and-forget solution. There's no downside for doing it. The diplo penalty for "protecting" your CS friends is trivial; you can slap an AI on the wrist twenty times in a game and still make one DoF after another. And there's no penalty at all for completely failing to protect a CS—if a CS under your protection is captured by another civ, you should lose influence with every other CS you pledged to protect. That, or they should just take the "pledge to protect" button out of the game entirely.
Click to expand...

I think they should make "pledge to protect" only available for CS that you could exact tribute from.


Also agree that it's silly that all you have to do is denounce.


3) Worker-stealing. Yeah, people have argued about this ad nauseam. At the end of the day, it's got to go. It has a grossly oversized impact on the course of the game—stealing a very early worker or two can push your victory up by dozens of turns. AI civs should defend their workers better; city-states should defend their workers (period). Additionally, declaring war on a CS should have more serious ramifications—you should be locked into war for five or ten turns and possibly take a permanent influence resting point hit with that CS. The devs might also consider making workers cheaper and balancing the rest of the game around the expectation that players will have more workers earlier.

I do all this stuff, of course. I take advantage of those stupid loans every single time I play, the pledge to protect/Consulates thing 90% of the time, and worker-stealing fairly often as well. I'd be crazy not to! They all make the game easier, but they do it in a very unsatisfying way. None of them requires much skill (pledging to protect takes none whatsoever), none of them adds any strategic depth to the game. They're all very mechanistic, exploitative tricks, and I think these should be the first three targets for any balance patch.
Click to expand...

I kind of laugh when I'm in the early game and I see that a barbarian has stolen some other Civ's settler.

I make it a priority to capture that camp and steal the settler before they can, so they can't settle close to me.
 
I'm actually amazed at how many of the ideas I posted on earlier suggestion forums made it in one form or another into BNW. Anyway I think the Ski Infantry has a niche on Ice Age maps.

Personal experience: After initially freaking out that there was no gold -- I've enjoyed playing two immortal games as Arabia on BNW, both enormous maps and very, very interesting games with the new features and the AI's new propensity to somewhat less belligerent and create more evenly matched empires. In my first BNW game, I had one of the most satisfying wars I have ever had in the series: the Socialist Arabs beating back a Fascist Moroccan invasion which saw Morocco conquer Socialist Portugal but lose some strategically important territory to me in a grueling but inconclusive war that saw some hefty gpt paid to me in the peace treaty -- the "Second War of the Desert" was no less grueling, but Arab naval superiority took Morocco's ports and islands, while air superiority helped the Arabs march into Marrakesh: the treaty Ahmad signed was a stunning handover of some dozen cities, reducing a once glorious empire to become the city-state of Tangiers (Elsewhere Socialist Brazil and Assyria were fighting Fascist Netherlands and Rome). In my second game, I became convinced that Camel Archers are the best units in the game after a handful of them mopped the battlefield with Shaka's impis, the one unit I had thought could compete with the Cameleers.

Back to ideas: I agree that there should be more luxury diversity, especially for Mercantile city states and tea and coffee would be good choices. I am also rather keen to see great works have a commerce effect (add to the gold value of trade routes with the city), and I think the idea could be expanded to include sacred relics (manuscripts, tombs, or possibly giving a great work of writing slot to a religious building) that could be housed monasteries or temples (monasteries should really be taken out as a belief and included into slew of religious buildings, but give a +2 bonus to culture, gold, faith, and science). Putting more great work slots in religious and maybe science buildings could also open up changing the great work benefit: great works in cathedrals could add +2 tourism and +1 culture +1 faith, while in monasteries they could add +2 tourism, +2 faith, and in universities they could add +2 tourism, +2 science. Also, I really would like to see happiness buildings produce more than two smileys each. For one thing, it is monotonous that every one of them gives the same benefit regardless of the cost without any other perks. That neither great works or trade routes add any happiness bonus, is also somewhat disappointing.

What I would really want to see is Walt Disney World become a world wonder that provides a +5 gold and tourism boost, but also adds a gold and tourism bonus for trade routes to its city.

PS: I would like to see free trade deals added that give a bonus to the trade between both countries. This would also blend nicely with the Economic Union policy in Freedom... not that I ever abandon the People's Revolution.
 
Jatta Pake said:
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.
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Piety opener allows you to have a pantheon early and there are various culture based belief better than tradition/liberty/honor opener.
 
i would like to see a different science bonus for the ai based on the era, now the beginnig of the game is too difficult, while from renaissance is easy to be the top science civ, even in immortal
 
Am I alone in thinking that the relationship modifier for same/differering ideologies is too great? I really hate it when I'm ahead in tech and pick an ideology first/second and then everybody else in the game chooses a different one then I chose. It doesn't matter how friendly they were, its only a matter of time before everybody hates me and DOWs me, just based on the ideology.
 
If they could actually fix the annex/pop-up bug I would be ecstatic with anything else the patch brings...
 
Yeah. Definitely. It's annoying that, if I get given a city when it's not my turn, I can't even go out in the map to figure out whether I like it's location before I have to choose what I'm going to do with it. If I choose to raze, then I can't puppet (but I can annex). If I choose to puppet, then I can't raze.
 
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