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

Except the problem is the techs are opened by era instead of specific technologies.. so beelining for just the military part of that era gets you the biggest social benefit.

If you needed theology to open piety, banking to open commerce, printing press to open rationalism, etc, it would make a lot more sense.

But instead your big dumb military beeline civ.. that discovered rifles without inventing the calendar gets all the social benefits of being in the rennaisance.
Indeed. In fact, I would like to see something like in Civ4: Tie each social policy to a certain technology. Not only would this prevent most of the SP slingshots, you would also have more of a reason to go for certain techs if you favour a certain style of play. And you could make SP trees like Order available earlier by making Communism and Planned Economy late-game policies.
 
Indeed. In fact, I would like to see something like in Civ4: Tie each social policy to a certain technology. Not only would this prevent most of the SP slingshots, you would also have more of a reason to go for certain techs if you favour a certain style of play. And you could make SP trees like Order available earlier by making Communism and Planned Economy late-game policies.

It is kind of strange how the science of acoustics suddenly makes everybody much happier, and greatly increases scientific research. Nobody even cares about the buildings or wonders it unlocks lol.
 
It is kind of strange how the science of acoustics suddenly makes everybody much happier, and greatly increases scientific research. Nobody even cares about the buildings or wonders it unlocks lol.

well, realism vs gameplay issue...

It would make the tech tree more interesting while slingshotting some key techs still being a valid option!
Honestly, i like this idea, but the two "two free tech/Policies" are still overpowered to my taste....
 
I don't see what's weird about that. Plenty of social/government systems just wouldn't be practicable without things like roads, printing press, banking, telegraph, flight, computers, etc.

I don't care about realism of social policies. Social policies were a gamey and unrealistic concept to begin with and if Firaxis wanted realism they should have kept civics. What I care about is gameplay. And making a secondary technology tree with it's seperate resource dependant on your primary tech tree is bad gameplay.

If I want lots of good social policies I should have to focus only on culture, not on a combination of culture and science.

It might would be useful to make it so that unlocking later trees would not require entirely filling out early ones.

Perhaps make it so that one only needs a certain amount of policies from earlier trees to unlock later ones.

That would be another option, but I'd prefer my version. It would give you a reason to fill out the entire policy tree instead of just cherry picking the best policies from each one.

Also, it might (not sure) be useful to keep era based requirements on the unlocking aspect of later trees (although this is a problem for Order and Autocracy).

No, that's exactly what my propositions are supposed to prevent. Era requirement is bad. I shouldn't have to worry about stupid stuff like getting a policy 3 turns before advancing to the next era.



Another change to policies I'd make is to remove the number of cities penalty for policy cost. But instead of getting total culture towards policies you'd only get average culture per city towards policies.

For example you have a capital producing 10 culture per turn and a second city producing 4 culture per turn. You accumulate (10+4)/2=7 culture per turn towards getting new policies, but the cost of the policies themselves would be the same if you were running OCC or ICS.

This has two beneficial effects. First it means that if you have a small number of cities producing lots of culture and then you expand shortly before getting a new policy, you still get the new policy faster than under the current system. That is you still gain the benefit for running a small number of high culture cities for most of the time.

The second benefit is that it would put an end to the exploit where you save culture, then sell cities to get low policy prices. This benefit would of course only apply if we could save policies.
 
While I disagree on the ties of Social Policies on techs, I do like your idea about average culture instead of total culture counting to a fixed culture. This makes the progression much more continuous and would prevent a lot of the exploits with the current sytem.
 
the patch is a step in the right direction.
but do not nerf horses str too much without a cost reduction, as they can be stopped in mp, regular horses that is, companion cav got no counter at all!

About the social policy gain, i kinda dislike that you have to take puppet states to get easy early culture while still keeping up in science.
I think the culture penalty per city is way too steep, and should be changed to 15%, and include puppets. that way you would usually want to annex cities instead of keeping em as puppets.

Also later culture buildings are not viable if you want to win the game as they cost too much maintence in MP.

Personally i would like to get less junk policies.
so i suggest a few changes to a few policies.

Tradition: it is very situational and almost made for france/classical era starts.
i would like it too be changed to a more general policy with +15% total food. like the floating gardens.

Oligarchy: it is just almost too good, perhaps a decrease to 25%

Monarchy: who buys land, as long as land has such a high cost and cities grow so slowly. it does not matter if you get them for half price, you are not going too buy alot of land because 5 tiles and you can buy a settler.(it could also be fixed by raiseing settler cost, or by decreaseing growth slowdown for each pop in the city)

landed elite: + 33% growth for capital only, well do you even notice that one. since it is gotten quite late and cities grow slower at bigger sizes it could be fair if it was +200%.

collective rule, organized religion and mandate of heaven are also very bad picks.
and military tradition is just way too good!
 
The SP hange would be less rubbish if they made some of the early civics stronger and introduced some that made specs more powerfull (I don't just mean the GPs) early on so therewas an alternative to a ICS trade post empire.

Also SP cost need to be reduced as you take more SPs and found more cities.

As for the other changes I think that they are all pretty good. Maybe just get rid of instant heal rather than force us to promote on the turn the XP is gained but no biggie.

All they need to do now is sort beaker overflow (maybe a slight tech cost increase to go with it?), maybe improve some of the terrain improvements and they are really cooking on charcole.
 
Maybe better than forcing you to choose an SP as soon as you meet the culture requirement, why not penalize you for not taking it?

If you have 10x the culture you need to purchase a policy, the policy is 2x in cost. The more excess, the more severe the penalty.

I think something along those lines would be much more reasonable, and open up another choice for the player.

Something like that might be good, if your culture is > amount needed for the next policy, you lose 1/2 culture

Although I think the simpler solution would be to make SP similar to techs... each culture point is spent the instant you get it.. ie it is invested in an SP.. when any SP has enough investment, the cost of all the SPs changes and you must choose a new SP to invest in. (it would force you to choose at the beginning of the game, but that might be worthwhile)
 
the patch is a step in the right direction.
but do not nerf horses str too much without a cost reduction, as they can be stopped in mp, regular horses that is, companion cav got no counter at all!

About the social policy gain, i kinda dislike that you have to take puppet states to get easy early culture while still keeping up in science.
I think the culture penalty per city is way too steep, and should be changed to 15%, and include puppets. that way you would usually want to annex cities instead of keeping em as puppets.

It seems to be positive that puppets are more common than annexed cities. It reduces the ability of major conquerers to train or purchase new units from the conquered cities and somewhat simulates the fact that they are somewhat autonomous in certain areas. If puppets added to social policy costs it could perhaps be at 1/4 or 1/2 the usual rate. Whether the penalities for annexing a city are too extreme is a possibility but I am not sure.


Tradition: it is very situational and almost made for france/classical era starts.
i would like it too be changed to a more general policy with +15% total food. like the floating gardens.

Monarchy: who buys land, as long as land has such a high cost and cities grow so slowly. it does not matter if you get them for half price, you are not going too buy alot of land because 5 tiles and you can buy a settler.(it could also be fixed by raiseing settler cost, or by decreaseing growth slowdown for each pop in the city)

landed elite: + 33% growth for capital only, well do you even notice that one. since it is gotten quite late and cities grow slower at bigger sizes it could be fair if it was +200%.

Yes, I agree that these policies need to be improved. Hopefully in the patch after the upcoming one.

Another option for Landed Elite is to set it to affect more than one city depending on map size. The key is to keep it as a "small empire" policy but to expand its power. Like maybe first two cities founded on a standard map and somewhat more on large maps.

Two variations of this could be considered. One with a static benefit (like +33% growth in the first three cities founded). Another is to have the benefit being larger on the earlier cities like the capital has +75 growth and second city +50% with the third city founded having a +25% bonus.
 
It seems to be positive that puppets are more common than annexed cities. It reduces the major conquerers to train or purchase new units from the conquered cities and somewhat simulates the fact that they are somewhat autonomous in certain areas. If puppets added to social policy costs it could perhaps be at 1/4 or 1/2 the usual rate. Whether the penalities for annexing a city are too extreme is a possibility but I am not sure.

I love Puppet States for both historical and gameplay reasons: from the (always illusive!) historical perspective it makes perfect sense that a large empire shouldn't be as perfectly monolithical as Civ empires have always been in the past (City States also help in this regard). From a gameplay perspective I find it very nice to actually be rewarded for reliving myself of micromanagement, now that's a radical change to the old Civ formula!

Come to think of it... Forget hexes or 1UPT; Puppeting is by far the single most important new mechanic of Civ 5! :p
 
The changes are nice, I think the community as a collective was wondering when OP Horsemen and Maritime CSes would be nerfed. Good step in the right direction. Now to nerf puppet states. At least slightly. Unhappiness from puppeting is fine, but do make social policies cost at least a BIT more when puppeting, seriously. Otherwise peaceful Gandhi will never win cultural in a reasonable time, esp. when his civ bonus relies for efficacy on NOT puppeting. -_-

Anyway, the upcoming patch doesn't address: AI Diplomacy, which really, really needs fixing. The patch says nothing about liberated civs liking you, or things like that. Hopefully, though, Pact of Friendship will mean a civ leader hates you less when you go to war together against a common foe.

What disturbs me though--is that these minor undocumented changes in the patch are masked from the community--and also, some things purported to have been fixed in the previous patch (red blotches and glowing orbs) still remain in game. And the diplomacy black screen crash still plagues me. I've actually been getting more crashes via clicking leaders from saved games than ever before the patch. Sigh. -_-
 
I love Puppet States for both historical and gameplay reasons: from the (always illusive!) historical perspective it makes perfect sense that a large empire shouldn't be as perfectly monolithical as Civ empires have always been in the past (City States also help in this regard). From a gameplay perspective I find it very nice to actually be rewarded for reliving myself of micromanagement, now that's a radical change to the old Civ formula!

Come to think of it... Forget hexes or 1UPT; Puppeting is by far the single most important new mechanic of Civ 5! :p

Agreed that puppets are a useful addition. Many empires had satellite states, puppet states, and other forms of organizing conquered territories.

I think most conquered cities, most of the time, should be puppets rather than annexed cities. If annexation is desired then certain things, such as the Police State policy, can and should help.
 
I dont get why ICS and Horses are such a big talk. On Mp ICS isnt the one and only strategy. With 2-4 cities you can properly defend and tech to rifles by 900ad. This is on quick settings. ICS cant do that. I have yet to see anyone with ICS strats dominate online. ICS on MP isnt by any means the best strategy. You can actually do better with one city. Also horses is not op. Horses are meant to have big movement big attack. They also have a counter. Spears +olig rape horses. Spears + archers+ olig rape greek UU. So i say before they start nerfing people should take a 2nd look.

The only thing I think needs nerf is give a city attack penalty to horses.
 
Where is this information coming from?


* Removed maintenance from defensive buildings. (Added 11/18)

* Policies must be selected the turn they are earned. (Added 11/18)



I was just playing last night and I didn't notice either of these changes.
 
Where is this information coming from?


* Removed maintenance from defensive buildings. (Added 11/18)

* Policies must be selected the turn they are earned. (Added 11/18)



I was just playing last night and I didn't notice either of these changes.

added to the patch notes. The patch hasn't hit yet.
 
I dont get why ICS and Horses are such a big talk. On Mp ICS isnt the one and only strategy. With 2-4 cities you can properly defend and tech to rifles by 900ad. This is on quick settings. ICS cant do that. I have yet to see anyone with ICS strats dominate online. ICS on MP isnt by any means the best strategy. You can actually do better with one city. Also horses is not op. Horses are meant to have big movement big attack. They also have a counter. Spears +olig rape horses. Spears + archers+ olig rape greek UU. So i say before they start nerfing people should take a 2nd look.

The only thing I think needs nerf is give a city attack penalty to horses.

The yardstick for CIV is not multiplayer on quick settings - multiplayers are just a tiny fraction of the total CIV players (probably way less than 1%) and to balance CIV around short MP sessions would simply be illogical.

The yardstick is single player, standard settings, all difficulty levels. that's where the game needs to be balanced (without taking away "fun factor"). On those settings, ICS is a beast because the AI doesn't punish the player like he would be in multiplayer. Horse rush is also a beast because the AI cannot defend against it effectively.
 
try this if your horsemen doesnt work as greece.
build a barracks, get a general, build hopelites while getting iron working.
now build the heroic epic. and tech for companion cavalry.
PS, only build units from then on and attack anything in sight.

If the enemy is really close then you can also just pop bronceworking asap as greece and bum rush him.

Point is oligarchy is well and fine, but if your opponent gets a general or 15% bonus then regular hopelites will crush your spearmen even if you have oligarchy.
 
So, essentially everyone will be struck with only 2 working strategies? Take Liberty and ICS, or take Honor and rush?
 
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