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

[Martin Alvito]

Brand new game and I didn't even have to pay for it. Should be interesting.

 

[biohazard72]

Holy hell. That is a lot of changes. Strategy post-patch is going to be wildly different.

"Added game option to disable turn-blocking promotions and policy choices"

Does this mean we can still delay policies? If so, this patch is looking amazing to me.

 

[elthrasher]

Added game option to disable turn-blocking promotions and policy choices. (Added 12/3)

This sounds as though we will now get to choose whether or not to allow these decisions to be deferred during game setup. Is that what the rest of you get out of this? If so, great solution. Everybody's happy now.

Overall, this is a good list of fixes, but I would like to see the game better optimized for performance. I'm well above the recommended specs, running at close to the minimum graphics settings and still having a lot of lag later in the game.

 

[avl8]

News are great, the main thing is still missing.

ETA.

 

[biohazard72]

News are great, the main thing is still missing.

ETA.

Would make an excellent Christmas present to all us Civ Fanatics.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

•Added GameEvents system for overriding Gameplay DLL specific functionality. (Added 12/3)

Oh, my goodness holy_buckaroo_bonzai_kalamazoooooo *IMPORTANT* feature to have handy from now on!!

 

[wurstburst]

•Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). (Added 12/3)

I'll have to see how this works. My worry is that when you conquer and raze a city, your SP cost will go up, even though you razed the city. How they implement is key.

•Added game option to disable turn-blocking promotions and policy choices. (Added 12/3)

Hurray! Being required to take SP immediately was my only problem with the upcoming patch. Glad it's now an option.

 

[Buccaneer]

With Mounted Units getting a little nerfed (thank god), I hope the AI can learn use them more. They don't need to bring siege units, just more horseys.

 

[alpaca]

•Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). (Added 12/3)

I'll have to see how this works. My worry is that when you conquer and raze a city, your SP cost will go up, even though you razed the city. How they implement is key.

I doubt that. It may happen if you first annex and then decide to raze, though. If you puppet, then raze, or raze directly, I would expect it to work well.

The new patch changes deserve pretty much unconditional praise. I'm especially happy they listened to us complaining about the forced policy picks and such and make it optional. Looks like they are indeed listening to the suggestions people are passing on to them.

 

[elthrasher]

•Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). (Added 12/3)

I'll have to see how this works. My worry is that when you conquer and raze a city, your SP cost will go up, even though you razed the city. How they implement is key.

Worst-case scenario: that happens but is obviously a bug and gets fixed in a subsequent patch. Hopefully they thought of it, but if not, maybe they'll read this thread.

 

[Txurce]

The new patch changes deserve pretty much unconditional praise. I'm especially happy they listened to us complaining about the forced policy picks and such and make it optional. Looks like they are indeed listening to the suggestions people are passing on to them.

They've done everything they said they would since the game was released - read these threads, and make the game better. And they're doing it faster than I ever expected.

 

[Slowpoke]

Worst-case scenario: that happens but is obviously a bug and gets fixed in a subsequent patch. Hopefully they thought of it, but if not, maybe they'll read this thread.

Still, is that such a bad thing? I mean, mass murder shouldn't be allowed for culture.

 

[Paeanblack]

Brand new game and I didn't even have to pay for it. Should be interesting.

Yeah, seriously.

I don't think you and I are launching spaceships in 200 turns after this one.

 

[budweiser]

Suck it ICS, happy buildings now cant give more happy than city pop.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Yeah, seriously.

I don't think you and I are launching spaceships in 200 turns after this one.

What we've been doing won't work. One possible route still exists. I suppose I'll have to get back to work on perfecting it.

 

[E66man]

I suppose I'll have to get back to work on perfecting it.

You might be well advised to wait until more information comes out regarding the "Multiple Tech Tree tweaks to address “slingshot” tech exploits." changes.

 

[biohazard72]

I would bet that hard Industrial slingshots are no longer feasible, but Renaissance ones will be - unless they really bog down the Medieval with heavy requirements. But I think that would remove too many choices.

 

[Martin Alvito]

You might be well advised to wait until more information comes out regarding the "Multiple Tech Tree tweaks to address “slingshot” tech exploits." changes.

I need to do further optimization as it stands. If I can't pull it off under current rules, it definitely isn't happening once Scientists get gimped.

I think I can guess the tech tree tweaks. They shouldn't matter.

 

[atteSmythe]

Suck it ICS, happy buildings now cant give more happy than city pop.

Doesn't matter. Or rather, only matters in the beginning. It and other changes do seem to make slingshotting to a more advanced age to pick up later SPs more tempting, though.

edit: I posted in the Patch Info thread on the C5 discussion forum, I think this is accurate:

Or, maybe not - instead of stopping at size 2 cities for early happiness neutrality, you'll stop at size 4 because the unhappiness hit won't be any worse. Early filler cities are actually better, even if you get fewer of them. Size five doesn't cost any happiness if you get Theocracy first. And there you'll sit for a long time, just like now.

Number of cities will be reduced based on the impact of the meritocracy and FP changes, but alpaca already proved ICS works just fine without any SPs whatsoever. I'm convinced that the maritime fixes will have little effect on filler cities. Basically, the worst case scenario is that you reduce some of your fillers' income by 1 by having to build a granary.

I'm willing to give it a shot. I just hope their goal is to rein ICS in a little, not kill it outright. In my latest game, though, each filler is generating a +8 gain. The building change will reduce that to +6, and I'm guessing that the FP/meritocracy changes will reduce that to +5. Ironically, if you want big cities, you're going to need more small ones!

 

[biohazard72]

Doesn't matter. Or rather, only matters in the beginning. It and other changes do seem to make slingshotting to a more advanced age to pick up later SPs more tempting, though.

Agreed. More cities is still better, but there is now significant incentive to slow down a bit, leaving a bit of happiness for a newly settled city to grow in order to make some use of the Colosseum (which I still see as being the first build for a settled city).

However, on the negative side, it does seem to promote capping core cities at size 4 in order to settle newer cities faster, so that the new cities can get full benefit from their Colosseums sooner (and hence you can settle more cities). Any growth beyond that is wasted happiness. I see any non-core city being capped at 4, permanently.

Long story short: welcome to the era of heavy happiness/growth micromanagement.

EDIT: LOL, you beat me to it, atteSmith! I can see we agree.