BNW is a very fun game.. but some things still make upset

[Rhaegar7]

I just won my first BNW game on Emperor. It was very fun, but..

As I lay down with temperature all night I was thinking about what needs fixing the most. I'm sure most of you won't be surprised by what I say. It took me some time to realize why most of you have been saying this all along, but oh well - I'll add to the chorus I guess.

1. Religion is still disgustingly awful. It causes me pain just to think about it. Most founder beliefs make me wanna hurt myself and the enhancer beliefs, while interesting on paper are not terribly useful if you're not playing Tithe (which feels suitably nerfed). There is very little reason to spread your religion unless you get like the best pick, which would be tithe/just war and even then there's not much benefit.

I remember when I played my first game on Civ 5, which happened to be G&K, I really enjoyed the game, but I was in no way convinced that my shrine and temple were even worth their gold - it stuck me as really strange considering how awesome the game was overall. And now that I'm playing immortal, I can safely say that you're probably best adviced to get the early schrine for the pantheon belief (those are actually done well) and just delete the damn thing. Then if you wait to found a religion by accident - FIIINE. Get good follower beliefs (those are alright) that suit your cities and never build a holy unit at all. You can beat deity by pretending faith does not exist in the game at all. (yeah, it's fun to get some great people later on, but that doesn't make the whole thing any less broken; simply save your faith all game) How bad is that?

Just look at Papal Primacy and think about it for a moment.. How useless is that in a real game, where by the time I've converted 3-4 city states (and wasting faith) I should have more than 30 influence anyway? Considering that even if it was "increase resting point by 500 for CC of same religion" it still wouldn't do it's just so bad it gives me nightmares. I think I'd pay 50$ if Firaxis just removed this damn thing from the game. Just to give you an idea of what it's doing to my brain.

1.1 - Piety is no better than before. Avoid the damn thing like hell and stop romanticizing about how you could fit it into a reasonable build. You can't. The faith/religion mechanics are just an insult to thinking players. You just pretend they're not there and try to do something about recurring nightmares. I'd go into detail, but I'm not such of a masochist. But what's even more insulting is that they serve you a thing like The Glory of God in the end to bait you into doing this stupid build. Well, actually - be my guest - it's good training for strong serial killing skills later in life.

2. Great tile improvements are next to useless. A very early academy or two are fine (they contribute to RA, later bulbs and give you tempo on other science improvements), when you get like 12 science for 1 food and about 18 to 2later. But there is exactly no reason in the game to build a Holy Site or Landmark ever and thus the Freedom 'New Deal' policy is also useless (and would still be useless even if they weren't). If you're not convinced then you're not working your mathematical mind. It was alright to build the occasional manufactory in your important coastal city before to boost it a little bit. Now the caravan does that much better. Btw, even academies aren't terribly useful, considering how much you get to just bulb.

GTI should be considerably stronger if they are to have any actual impact on the game. It's not insignificant that you're losing like 2 food on those too. I'd rather have my 2 specialists with civil society, thank you very much.

3. Social policies seem to be badly nerfed for no reason other than to mess with me. They were pretty strong before and provided good options at all times. I'd often have to spend some time thinking between 2 or 3 good choices. They were the one thing I liked most about the game. Now most of the time I have nothing I want to take. This really makes me sad as it means the game is now considerably worse as far as core gameplay goes. I don't know why this nerf happened... Consider aesthetics - most of the policies give you more policies - if you do some math you'll quickly find out that those policies don't return their investment pretty much the whole game.. Kinda how rpg gamers learned at some point not to take perks like quick learner even very early in the game, because they simply do nothing at all, but deceive you that they do. Instead of meaningful, interesting bonuses now you have small gold or happiness bonuses all over the place. F. T. S. !!!

Obvious examples are those boosts to GS,GM production - seriously? Have they forgotten that those are on one tier with the other 2? I get +25% to all 6 from a freaking garden and they're giving me a policy to boost 1!!! of those by 25%? It makes me very, very sad..

I'm gonna stop at that, before I get into fits.

3.1 The way you acquire culture and policies is a bit weird in this game. I hope they focus a bit more. Simple example - a museum will net you like 1 culture (?); a great piece of art or history will yield 2 (?); allying the (say) 4 cultural CC will net you 104. Those political treatises are interesting though; perhaps a step in the right direction.

Seriously, Sid .. I'm a big fan of yours, but do the balance. This beautiful piece of art does not deserve to have such broken game mechanics.



I'm out.

..

And don't hurt yourself, it's not your fault.

Moderator Action: Changed thread title to something more appropriate. This is a family friendly forum.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Idleray]

Religion is still a pretty important aspect of the game: Sharing a religion makes the cultural victory easier as it applies another 25% modifier to tourism.

I think settling your first GP for a holy site is reasonable provided you started with a strong religion-based civ and you're definitely sure of going into Piety.

IMO the main reason you'd always try to generate a reasonable amount of faith is because in the late game you can use it to purchase Great People, and since Artists, Writers and Musicians are on separate GPP trackers now faith is even more important:

Faith-buying GA to pop a powerful late game Golden Age
Faith-buying GW to basically convert faith to culture, now that culture is harder to generate from buildings
Faith-buying GM to basically win the game with its concert tour ability.
Faith-buying any of these to get a matching-era great work to slot into your wonder/museum

See, culture and now science in BNW are mechanics that give diminishing returns the more cities you have, but faith and gold are not. Therefore a piety strategy fits well into an over-arching game plan of going liberty, piety then order.

As for your beef with the Aesthetics tree, I think it's designed as THE tree you go into for the new cultural victory, given that completing the tree doubles your tourism bonuses, I don't think it's anything to scoff at.

I will agree with your general sentiment that a lot of the policies feel over-tuned and not "fun" in the sense of making you feel "aha, now with this strategy I'm OP".

I do kinda miss the kind of broken shenanigans one can get up to in previous Firaxis titles like SMAC with the supply crawler spam or Orbital Power spam.

However I think over-all it's for the best, making anything seem obviously good will just mean you get it every time which reduces replayability. As it is now everyone's trying to figure how to piece together all the little things that give incremental advantages and synergies and work it into a big game plan.

 

[Rhaegar7]

But what does Piety really do to help you? It's not like you'll have 12k more faith late game. You'd be lucky to have 4k more and a bit of gold to show for it.

I'm hating the idea that I have to rush the whole policy tree now to get the strong finisher while wasting policies on stuff like +5 gold or +3 happiness or + 1/5th of a GP. It's almost as if they nerfed the hell out of the normal social policies to make piety look a bit less horrible. And I'm sure not a single person in the world can defend the moronic Founder 'bonuses'. (which make the enhancer bad too, because you simply don't want to spread)

And actually - the strategical quality of a game is largely dependent on actually having what you would consider "OP" options. What we're having now is the illusion of doing something with all our attention to religion and stuff, while if we just turn it off it won't matter too much at all. Well working mechanics that can make you or break you are what makes a game good. Meaningless mechanics that you can simply ignore make for a bad strategy game.

And nerfing Social policies like that means that the effect of your strategical choices is much less pronounced, making for a worse game in many ways. I really don't understand why they did it.

A lot of the policies are now just irrelevant. They do basically nothing. I'm playing around now with Freedom - Creative Expression? Seriously? A policy that costs way more culture than it gives? And there are at least 20 like that now. ..

That's totally against principle. A policy should give you a strong tangible bonus and immediately creating a threat. What they've done is preposterous. They've almost killed the game for me and it's really, really sad.

Economic union? When you'll be trading solely with CC after you get the +4influence perk? Completely worthless.

Merchant confederacy? Insulting.

Most everything Aesthetics is worthless. Yes, the finisher is fine, but it's totally against principle to do that.

And by 'totally against principle' i mean that it's obviously that such an approach lessens the quality of the game by default - you're supposed to be thinking hard about which policy to choose next - they've killed this now. Why?

WHYYYYYY???!?!

Commerce used to be good. Now it's quite worthless on an ocean map, which is just no. +25% production on a single GP tier is lol.

Exploration is so-so. At least it does something relevant.

Sovereignity and Humanism are so bad I don't really want to finish the Science tree anymore..

Right now I'm just sitting at turn 346 - winning easily on Emperor - coastal heavy map with Spain - I just abused the out of politics by having alliances a bit faster than the rest. Patronage is going to be must-have in every game apparently. But my social choices don't mean anything. It doesn't matter one bit what I'm choosing. They don't do anything. There is no skill involved in the way you choose and time your social policies now. It's just broken.

Way too ruin your game Firaxis. I hope you get what you deserve for ruining a piece of art.

 

[kimadactyl]

The only thing that REALLY makes me want to tear my hair out is the great works manipulation screens. I'm surprised there aren't more threads about it, I don't think they interface could be worse if they tried :/

 

[LeLutinBanni]

Religions and Faith are VERY useful...

It's a good way to get extra growth, gold and hapiness :

Ceremonial burial +1 20 Happiness for each City following this Religion
Church property +2 20 Gold for each City following this Religion

Policies are not gamebreakers...Policies are here to support your play style...........

But yes...I think the great tile improvement are kinda useless.

 

[Rhaegar7]

Religions and Faith are VERY useful...

It's a good way to get extra growth, gold and hapiness :

Ceremonial burial +1 20 Happiness for each City following this Religion
Church property +2 20 Gold for each City following this Religion

Policies are not gamebreakers...Policies are here to support your play style...........

But yes...I think the great tile improvement are kinda useless.

Yes, it's marginally useful to actually found a religion, although it's mostly for the follower beliefs for your own cities No one is contesting that.

What's not useful is actually buying religious units or buildings or trying to spread the religion. Which makes policies like 'Mandate of Heaven' look ******ed now. But all in all - religion does not work as it should be - players should be fighting over the map for followers so that their founder/enhancer beliefs do something. In fact - this is completely worthless and you'd be best adviced to simply ignore religious units altogether. And all in all - you can handicap yourself to be unable to found a religion and you'll find that nothing has really changed. That's not simply bad, I'm at a loss of words for it.

And frankly - I'd rather have 5000 gold instead of 5000 faith late in the game, even with GP options.


A well done policy system will have you think long and hard about what will benefit you the most, and will have meaningful and tangible effect on the game. Now it's probably 2/3 as useful as it was before and I find this nerf to be one of the worst design choices in the history of game development.

A game is as good as it's strong strategical options. Take those away and it's all over and all we're left it is waiting for the next installment.


The game is now a gimmicky role-playing game with hugely diminished strategical quality. It really goes to great lengths to give you the illusion that what you're doing and choosing is in any way meaningful, but most of it now really isn't. If my choices make no difference in the game, then I'm simply wasting my time now and I should look for something better to do.


One last thing - It's very hard now to spread your borders for your new cities. I have no idea why they did that, but it's having a negative effect on the game for sure.

 

[hudders]

The only thing that REALLY makes me want to tear my hair out is the great works manipulation screens. I'm surprised there aren't more threads about it, I don't think they interface could be worse if they tried :/

The Ideology screen is pretty poor as well. Looks like they knocked it up in an afternoon - why do we need another screen for it? Why doesn't it just slot into the social policy window??

 

[Rhaegar7]

Well now folks.. Turns out we'll have to hope for a 3rd expansion in which the devs will have to finally restrain themselves from bringing in clowns, horror writers and strippers and actually work to perfect what we've got till now.

But I guess we'll have to settle for the strippers.

A clown stripper. Mm..

 

[pilot00]

Well now folks.. Turns out we'll have to hope for a 3rd expansion in which the devs will have to finally restrain themselves from bringing in clowns, horror writers and strippers and actually work to perfect what we've got till now.

But I guess we'll have to settle for the strippers.

A clown stripper. Mm..

I vote for the clown stripper. But I dont worry it will be probably come earlier, around 10 patches later and the game will be ironed out I guess.

To the OP. My dear friend you are mistaken on many accounts and without meaning any offense I would suggest that you play a couple of games more. There are other problems with BNW right now which can destroy the experience but (un)fortunately those that you state are implementations that work better now as they are for the game mechanics.

Just give them a second try

The Ideology screen is pretty poor as well. Looks like they knocked it up in an afternoon - why do we need another screen for it? Why doesn't it just slot into the social policy window??

Space id guess. If only it had the artwork from the box.

 

[Rhaegar7]

I hope you're right about the patches.

I think I've given the mentioned things enough thought already, but thanks for the opinion anyway.

 

[Rhaegar7]

Btw, having Divine Inspiration as a follower belief in a tall empire does wonders (hehe) for your faith growth without having to actually build anything more than the first shrine. And some people think that spending 6 points in a tree to get like 4k faith out of it (generously) is a good idea.

 

[EditorRex]

Well now folks.. Turns out we'll have to hope for a 3rd expansion in which the devs will have to finally restrain themselves from bringing in clowns, horror writers and strippers and actually work to perfect what we've got till now.

But I guess we'll have to settle for the strippers.

A clown stripper. Mm..

3rd Expansion? Why fix what's broken when you can junk it and start over?

Many of us have been eagerly awaiting Civ VI since the day Civ V arrived.
G&K and BNW are just trying to move product until they can get it right.

V is to Civ what Vista was to Windows.

 

[Rhaegar7]

Do you dispute that the founder perks are just terrible ? I mean I don't expect anyone in their right mind to defend for example Papal Primacy. I mean.. what game are you guys playing?

 

[Falconiano]

Agree with everything except where you say SPs have been "nerfed" and the culture system.

It's true that religion is still way too RNG, and Piety sucks terribly regardless how loud you yell at me about your precious Piety opener, and the reformations are almost worse than pantheons.
It's also true that some GTimprovements are next to useless.

But SPs have simply been moved into tenets.
The Honor piece that got removed simply got moved to Autocracy, etc.

And the new culture system is great.
I never won a cultural in pre-BNW because it was boring and messy, now it's actually fun and deep.

 

[Rhaegar7]

3rd Expansion? Why fix what's broken when you can junk it and start over?

Many of us have been eagerly awaiting Civ VI since the day Civ V arrived.
G&K and BNW are just trying to move product until they can get it right.

V is to Civ what Vista was to Windows.

I see you are a wise and powerful leader. My people have decided to adopt your religion.



Live long and prosper!

Edit: What bugs me specifically is not that the game is that bad.. It's good and I have a lot of fun playing it, but one is left pondering in pain how it could be at least 10 times better if the devs would only take their jobs a bit more seriously.

 

[Rhaegar7]

Agree with everything except where you say SPs have been "nerfed" and the culture system.

It's true that religion is still way too RNG, and Piety sucks terribly regardless how loud you yell at me about your precious Piety opener, and the reformations are almost worse than pantheons.
It's also true that some GTimprovements are next to useless.

But SPs have simply been moved into tenets.
The Honor piece that got removed simply got moved to Autocracy, etc.

And the new culture system is great.
I never won a cultural in pre-BNW because it was boring and messy, now it's actually fun and deep.

I don't dispute that the game has gotten a bit better. I just wanted to point out the several very weak points. Culture is fun and all, but a lot of the policies should be buffed in my opinion. Where I first heard of Poland getting 7 free policies I couldn't imagine that being balanced. Now that I see how weak they are now and it all makes sense - "Let's nerf everything" has been their motto for some reason. Probably to make the tourism/diplo aspect of the game more important. I'm used to spending culture on policies that instantly give me +60 gold/turn or reduce unit purchase cost by 33% or other super strong buffs. Not that those aren't here anymore. It's just that you have to spend like 10 of your policies on worthless ones and that's terribly annoying and unprofessional, considering that it wasn't the case before.

And if I was a dev - "Let's buff everything" would be mine. That's my personal opinion on how strategy mechanics should work at least.

And again - the game is better than before and I enjoy playing it very much. It's just that it's also really good at making me mad.

 

[pilot00]

Do you dispute that the founder perks are just terrible ? I mean I don't expect anyone in their right mind to defend for example Papal Primacy. I mean.. what game are you guys playing?

One that we wants to dominate the world council without spending SPs into partonage

Agree with everything except where you say SPs have been "nerfed" and the culture system.

It's true that religion is still way too RNG, and Piety sucks terribly regardless how loud you yell at me about your precious Piety opener, and the reformations are almost worse than pantheons.
It's also true that some GTimprovements are next to useless.

But SPs have simply been moved into tenets.
The Honor piece that got removed simply got moved to Autocracy, etc.

And the new culture system is great.
I never won a cultural in pre-BNW because it was boring and messy, now it's actually fun and deep.

Apparently you haven't been steamrolled in multilayer by byzantine tanks bought by faith and having the blitzkrieg tenant

 

[Rhaegar7]

Papal primacy might net you like 40 influence total if you're lucky and of course you shouldn't send missionaries to do that if they're not requesting the faith specifically, because that would be bad..
It is worth maybe 2% as much as Consulates (previously known as Aesthetics for those that haven't switched) as far as usefulness goes and I'm being generous.

Consulates will net you the 20 points increase immediately to all CC's in the game, which is usually the all 16 at normal settings (and the usefulness goes up with more CCs) and is therefore worth like 3k gold easily and the tempo that goes with it is really important - you're suddenly friends with everyone on the map given some proper early scouting.

Papal primacy might not net you even 1 point, because by the time the CC has adopted your religion it will usually be at over 30 even by accident. And by the time you'вe converted like 4, you should be having 60+ influence with all of the CCs that you care about.

I seriously have no idea how such a stupidity is still in the game.

Dominate the council? Hf roleplaying. Nothing wrong with that. I guess I''ll be doing that too, cause actually trying to do strategy has become quite difficult.

 

[pilot00]

Role playing? Well ok if you insist, its blatantly obvious that you are not aware of the right synergy of said mechanics and how they are supposed to work, neither tried them.
So when all is said and done to each his own as they say

 

[MantaRevan]

I hope you're right about the patches.

I think I've given the mentioned things enough thought already, but thanks for the opinion anyway.

When does the next patch come out anyway?