adwcta
King
My 2 cents:
America and Indonesia didn't get much better.
Germany has gotten significantly better, and much more late game focused (yeah, there's a bias toward early game benefits, but it's misplaced imo, and Germany's now going to have the best late game benefit in the game, with a late-game UU and a late-game UB combo, and UA that stays relevant in late-game). It can also wreck havoc in the very early game easier with the changes to warmonger penalties, so it has an easy way out of a bad start. Need more testing of the warmonger changes, but it's promising. Compare to Russia.
Japan has gotten slightly better. +1 culture is nothing to sneeze at, as it builds up the entire game (see: Morocco), and the AI isn't a human player, so when going military (as Japan will continue to do) it'll be easier to deal with ideological unhappiness. Finally a coastal start bias, which helps Japan even without the fishing boats, because it's UA shines in naval battles. Samurai bonus is very situational. Zero bonus is too small to matter. I don't think they'll ultimately move up though, but there's a chance. It looks like tourism-domination mix, which is already easier to pull off than straight domination, has received an even larger boost in this patch, so who knows. Japan will be the only civ with a +tourism and +military bonus.
Generally, I think situational warmongers (China, Assyria), tourism-based (France, Brazil, Poly) and mid-game gold civs (Portugal) are getting a boost, so they might also get moved up. On the other hand, diplo victories are nerfed (as they should be), so I'm looking at you Greece.
America and Indonesia didn't get much better.
Germany has gotten significantly better, and much more late game focused (yeah, there's a bias toward early game benefits, but it's misplaced imo, and Germany's now going to have the best late game benefit in the game, with a late-game UU and a late-game UB combo, and UA that stays relevant in late-game). It can also wreck havoc in the very early game easier with the changes to warmonger penalties, so it has an easy way out of a bad start. Need more testing of the warmonger changes, but it's promising. Compare to Russia.
Japan has gotten slightly better. +1 culture is nothing to sneeze at, as it builds up the entire game (see: Morocco), and the AI isn't a human player, so when going military (as Japan will continue to do) it'll be easier to deal with ideological unhappiness. Finally a coastal start bias, which helps Japan even without the fishing boats, because it's UA shines in naval battles. Samurai bonus is very situational. Zero bonus is too small to matter. I don't think they'll ultimately move up though, but there's a chance. It looks like tourism-domination mix, which is already easier to pull off than straight domination, has received an even larger boost in this patch, so who knows. Japan will be the only civ with a +tourism and +military bonus.
Generally, I think situational warmongers (China, Assyria), tourism-based (France, Brazil, Poly) and mid-game gold civs (Portugal) are getting a boost, so they might also get moved up. On the other hand, diplo victories are nerfed (as they should be), so I'm looking at you Greece.