10 Fixes Needed for the Fall Patch

Uh, when have you ever had difficulty getting a 1 to 1 trade out of a friendly AI?


often enough for me. it's happened when the AI had one copy and i try a 1-1 trade. also i've had games where all AI's decided that i was a warmonger, and Venice+Poland who had a current DoF with me (and still "Friendly" as well) wouldn't even come close to offering a lux trade when they had 2 or 3 copies of their lux.
 
Hello, I play mainly vs AI on immortal.
My points aren't really simple "fixes" but overall thoughts on what I would like to be changed.

1) Victory conditions:
- Diplomacy victory is too much city state based and comes too fast.
- Domination, needs to come faster. It just takes too much time to menage all those units and take capitals. It's annoing how player already knew he won but needs those ~50 turns to finish by brainless clicking.

2) Social Policies:
- Tradition is superior to all other starting policies. It needs to be nerfed or other policies needs to get buffed.
- Rationalizm opener just feels too obligatory, maybe put secularism deeper into
tree.
- Patronage also feels too obligatory since consulates + pledge to protect is so damn good. Consulates deeper IMHO.

3) Units:
- There are too many pre industralization era uniqe units and very few post industralization uniqe units. On standard speed it's really hard to enjoy those early game units since best time to conquer is after industralization.
- Cavalry would be more usefull if it had bonus vs artillery/ranged units.

4) Civilizations:
- Some of civs have abilities or units player can almost never utilize. For example, Portugese Conquistador comes at time when AI already took every piece of land on map.

5) Religion:
- Tithe stands out too much.

I wholeheartedly agree on what wigwam wrote(page 3#42) about zero intrest loans, worker stealing and pledging.

I spent a lot of time years ago plaing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and I really liked the mechanic of sparing AI. When you were about to destroy AI or had significantly more military power while being at war, AI asked for mercy and pledged to be your ally declaring wars on your enemies and always giving you their votes. I would really like to see that kind of thing here. While some AI's should be resilent and fight to last drop of blood other leaders shuld be easiter to dominate.
 
Just allow my GG/Khan to pass friendly Military/Civilian units.

it sucks when your GG is stack with your Hakapelita? then you got another Civ's unit in front of you which is Friendly BTW, your Hakapelita? pass but then your GG can't. WHY?because your GG is a Civilian and they are not allowed to pass to other Civilian units or Military units, :stupid: Rule. then how the hell did Patton pass the Crowded City of Paris during WWI?
 
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: Don't agree here. If you want culture so much, go for something else.

9: I would agree except that the Danes already have little langskips/drakkars when their units embark. In viking fashion, a separate landskip/drakkar unit that could move up rivers would be devastatingly fun. Otherwise I like the Danes -- not that I ever played them, but I like bribing them to kill people that hinder me.

8: Agree on adding tea and coffee. I remember Civ CTP even had tobacco and opium.

7: They do get weaker without garrisons as has been pointed out.

6: Not really a problem in my experience.

5: The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire -- yet made it to Civ IV.

3: Tough luck.

2 & 1: I do like the idea of liberating City States via World Congress, and I agree new features would be welcomed in diplomacy. I for one would like to see more bargaining with other civs: inviting, say, Portugal and Egypt to denounce Morocco with you -- or threaten war if Morocco does not sign peace with Spain. But at the very least we should be able to ask the AI the same demands he can ask of us. I disagree entirely with allowing tech trading, but I would like to see units be tradable at some point: either purchasing units a play already possesses, or striking a bargain to build a certain number of units in 30 turns (one order of seven aircraft carriers to go please).

Sending a diplomat should offer a diplomatic boost however slight, and maybe a penalty if removed. In real diplomacy, not every country is sent an ambassador. I disagree with spy assassinations as well even if it reminds me of Medieval Total War. What I do agree with is amending the lack of information given about other countries' diplomatic standings: there should be a table that shows which country has denouned and friended whom and who has embassies and where someone trade routes are being sent -- Global Politics is simply insufficient information. Also, there should be a diplomatic bonus for countries that complete the same policy trees. Ideally I would also like to see the policy trees also have a bigger impact on how the civ's theoretical government functions, or even forcing players to complete one ancient policy tree before opening a medieval/renaissance one. Otherwise I can continue opening each tree to grab its wonder when I have enough of a lead.
 
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.

I've always found Consulates to be an incredibly badly designed policy. It's especially egregious with Siam's UA. Game just gets stupid and it's generally why I avoid that policy.
 
It keeps getting mentioned by various people but seems to also keep getting overlooked or ignored so I'll say it again on behalf of all those who already have:

Cities already DO get stronger when they are garrisoned!!!

Test it out - check an ungarrisoned city's attack strength and then move a unit into the city and watch it change.

PS: This is whether you have the appropriate Tradition policy or not - Tradition just increases that garrisoned city strength even further.
 
It keeps getting mentioned by various people but seems to also keep getting overlooked or ignored so I'll say it again on behalf of all those who already have:

Cities already DO get stronger when they are garrisoned!!!

Test it out - check an ungarrisoned city's attack strength and then move a unit into the city and watch it change.

PS: This is whether you have the appropriate Tradition policy or not - Tradition just increases that garrisoned city strength even further.

The policy also makes the garrisoned unit maintenance free.

Does the policy also make the city take less damage, or does it just make the city attack more powerful?
 
The policy also makes the garrisoned unit maintenance free.

Does the policy also make the city take less damage, or does it just make the city attack more powerful?

Putting a unit in a city garrison increases the city's strength. The city strength is used with both city attack, and city defense. So the increased strength from a garrison means that the city will both A) deal out more damage when bombarding units, and B) take less damage from ranged/melee attacks.

In short the answer is YES, a garrison will make the city take less damage and make it's attack more powerful.
 
But, to clarify, the Oligarchy policy does not make city defense any stronger or result in any reduction in city damage when it is attacked -- the policy just improves the city's own ranged attacks (in addition to making the garrisoned unit maintenance free).
 
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) I don't agree. Piety would be overpowered if it added culture with the opener. There are plenty of pantheons that add culture, and the +1 faith to shrines/temples make up for not picking a faith based pantheon. Also, finisher adds +3 culture to holy sites. If you play Piety right, you can easily outpace Tradition in culture production.

9) Denmark seems ok to me. I can go either way if they change or not. They are a warmonger civ, so pick them if you want to warmonger. Not every civ needs to be top tier. Some can be there for fun. Maybe the solution is just tweaking the AI so they don't fall over in every game.

8) This is a game concept issue. If you want to put more dependence on standing armies for defense, then lower city strengths. Cities already are pretty easy even if all they have is 1 garrison unit. Also, this change would be a huge nerf to AI, since they have trouble defending their cities without mass numbers to begin with.

7) This is a nice to have, but not really needed. New luxuries won't change gameplay. You wouldn't see much change in the game other than a "new" luxury is now showing up. Each map would still be limiting the total number of unique luxuries on the map. So adding tea/coffee just means one game you may see coffee and not something else. I think the map scripts already account for having unique luxuries in different regions of the map.

6) In order to do this, AI needs to know what your cities are desiring for WLTKD. That seems like a weird thing for them to know.

5) Yea, it definitely seems like they forgot some things when adding Lake Victoria. It should not be a mountain. Technically it should be a fresh water source. However, this would make it incredibly OP, as any city with this natural wonder would have crazy amounts of growth by building farms around Lake Victoria.

4) I didn't think it took a movement point to pillage a trade route...not sure about this one.

3) Yup, this sucks. You shouldn't have open borders with AI anyways. Also, you can put any unit such as a sleeping worker or great general on that tile to prevent archeologists from digging it.

2) Uh...yea. This is sorta obvious. World Congress is a new concept in the game. So of course there's room for improvement.

1) This would be a nice addition too.
 
you can already do that...

Yes, but it requires needless micromanagement: I have to keep checking the progress of all my Museums vs. the progress of all my Archeologists. Remember back in Civ 2 how, before clicking "end turn," you had to check all your cities to make sure none of them had more unhappy citizens than happy citizens, which would mean losing a turn of that city's production that could have easily been avoided by adding one more entertainer specialist? Those days weren't fun.
 
5. All Natural Wonders are mountains to make them impassable - even the Great Barrier Reef. I'm willing to bet the coding to change it to accommodate Lake Victoria and GBR is simply not worth the work.

I'm no programmer, but is it really that difficult to have a value for "terrain type" and a value for "passable?" for each tile? Maybe mountains could become passable under certain situations (tech, promotion, wonder, etc. . .). Seems easy to differentiate between hexes that can be moved over, or not.
 
I've always found Consulates to be an incredibly badly designed policy. It's especially egregious with Siam's UA. Game just gets stupid and it's generally why I avoid that policy.

It's also silly how ludicrously it scales on larger map sizes.
 
I think when it was said cities need to be weaker without a garrison, they meant, like, noticeably weaker. The numbers are there, but you still need basically the same amount of military strength to take it. Cities don't fall very easily even when they have minimal defenses, which seems odd when historically things like walls and castles were basically absolutely required in even small cities lest some angry guy with a pitchfork take over a sizable chunk of your land.
 
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?

This. We NEED more proposals. Especially military ones. Too often i run out of things to propose. Also international space station should be moved to rocketry, that could give it more use.Germany and Japan will probably be changed, but i agree that Denmark needs some tweaks too.

Also other things i would like to see:

1. Some buff to horsemen and mounted units in general (e.g. 20% vs. ranged, not having city penalty if city does not have walls etc.)

2. Buff to honor

3. Limit to air units per city (5 normally and 10 with airport for example)

4. Helicopter don't take river penalties (it makes sense, since it can just fly over river) and making helicopters able to move on coast (not ocean) but taking 50 damage if ending turn on coast tile like with mountains. Also carriers should be able to carry helicopters.
 
10) I don't agree. Piety would be overpowered if it added culture with the opener. There are plenty of pantheons that add culture, and the +1 faith to shrines/temples make up for not picking a faith based pantheon. Also, finisher adds +3 culture to holy sites. If you play Piety right, you can easily outpace Tradition in culture production.

No offense, but that last sentence is all kinds of wrong. The only culture in Piety is in the finisher's +3 :c5culture: for holy sites, of which I rarely have more than one. I think what you mean is that you can get lots of culture from your religion, which is true. I'm playing a game where I get boatloads of culture from 7 wine plantations, Goddess of Festivals, and Monasteries. But I'm getting all that culture without Piety! Had I adopted Piety instead of Liberty, I doubt I would've gotten as much culture from my religion (never mind the +1 :c5culture: per city from Liberty's opening) because other civs might've expanded to that wine before I could.

I could only come up with a few cases in which Piety would indirectly net you more :c5culture: than Liberty (let alone Tradition):
1. The +1 :c5faith: for Shrines/Temples makes the difference in you getting the pantheon / religious belief that you want.
2. Free Religion allows you to adopt someone else's pantheon that gives you culture.
3. The modest gains in :c5faith: from Organized Religion and Mandate of Heaven make the difference in you being to spread your religion to your own cities or being overwhelmed by someone else's religion.
4. My favorite Reformation belief, To the Glory of God.

The last of those is a late game bonus, and doesn't address the poor early-game culture in Piety. The other three are just not that likely to happen. If I want a religion, I aim for a faith-producing pantheon like Goddess of the Festivals or Desert Folklore, instead of taking Piety and thereby sacrificing culture/growth (Tradition) or culture/expansion (Liberty).

So yes, I think Piety needs another buff. I do believe it's stronger now, with the very nice Reformation beliefs and without the absolutely ridiculous incompatibility with Rationalism. But Piety used to be THE culture tree. It should give more culture than +3 :c5culture: in the finisher.
 
Tradition's opener is too strong +3 culture, and borders expansion. Borders expansion is an awesome enough benefit that it could be much deeper inside another policy tree, and all by itself, and still be worth taking.

Piety's opener is just a build discount on Shrines/Temples? When you first take it you'll most likely only have one city, so you're using up a policy choice to get maybe 4 turns knocked off the production time of a single building. It's a valuable benefit, but not very timely.
 
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