What, exactly, is more nerfing?
Mainly the hits to the ICS strategy.
--Cities must now have three or more tiles in between them (1 more tile than before), unless separated by a sea/coast tile.
--Cities now only get 1 free production and 0 free gold (1 less in both cases)
--Trade routes get bonus gold based on population of capital; formula changed a bit so minimal gold received for hooking up very small cities
--Allied maritime city states provide 3 food per turn to the capital, not 4
--Reduced Colosseum happiness to 3, and reduced maintenance to 2 gold
--Reduced Theatre happiness to 4
I'm not 100% sold that a 1-3 city "empire" should be on equal footing as a continent-spanning empire, but w/e, I never really got the hang of ICS anyway so I'm not too bothered.
I can't help but notice the line of sight bug isn't on the list of bug fixes. Maybe it falls under the generic "bug fixes and tweaks" section, but since that one has been making us throw our hands up and yell WTF, firaxis, WTF since day one, I'd think they'd specifically mention it.
Other thoughts:
Significant turn time improvements.
Better be -.- My system is way too good for the wait times in the late game, even on standard maps.
User warned if about to declare war on a city state that is under protection of a major power
Sounds good on paper, but what moron plans a war with a CS w/o seeing who the ally is first? So it's just one more spam notice to click through, great.
Avoid cascades of denunciations against a single player. AI now uses its own current friendliness level with a given power to determine how much weight to place on a denunciation against that power.
This is the one that has everyone cheering, but I'm skeptical. Problem is, diplo is still broken and that means you'll still get denounced out of the AI's stupidity. Remove a civ from a game and everyone will hate you for being a war-monger. Sure they may check to see how they feel about you before joining the cascade, but how they feel about you will have taken a hit already from killing the other civ, so you'll still get denounced. The way it should work is, if the AI is friendly with you and hostile to the civ you killed, they should like you
more. If they're friendly with you and neutral with them, there should be no change. If they're friendly with both, they should like you less. Oh by the way, I
still see no added options to make the AI friendly with you, including what should be obvious things like "you agreed to help us in our war." Yeah, you'll still get no credit for doing that. Then called a war monger when you succeed. then denounced by the civ that asked for help in the first place. Diplo is still broken, period. This changes nothing.
Denunciations expire after 50 turns
Declarations of Friendship expire after 50 turns
Because it's not already hard enough to try to keep track of who is friends with who.
Fix situations where AI demeanor and verbiage didn't match friendliness level shown in diplomatic status string.
This was a bug? I thought it was their attempt at "backstabbing." I guess the AI will be able to backstab more successfully now? I'm not excited, but some people may enjoy that I guess.
Nuclear and Solar Plants now require Factory but increase to production is now 35% and provide 4 production themselves; these two now mutually exclusive
I hate this one a lot. a LOT. a looooottttttttttttt. a
lot. A
loooootttttttt. This means you'll not only need coal for factories, but solar/nuclear plants as well. A solar or nuclear plant that requires coal, wonderful idea -.- wonderful -.-
Academy increased to 6 Science.
Landmark increased to 6 Culture.
Manufactory increased to 4 Production.
This I might like. I'll have to see what the new consensus is on GP improvements vs burn-abilities.
Representation: Each city you found will increase the cost of your next Policy by 33% less. Also starts a Golden Age.
ok, someone do the math for me on whether or not this makes a culture victory viable for big empires. either way it looks like liberty is going to replace commerce, patronage, or order on the must-have social tree list for the culture victory. Even if you only have one city it's like a free Micheal Angelo's chapel.