Fall Patch changes discussion thread

[FilthyRobot]

Yes, nail on head, especially for MP games. Although I see just as many end with GS pop rush to XCOM and game over. Usually, literally within 15 turns of Research Labs being researched by whoever gets there first the game is over. Hubble space telescope exasperates the problem. So in most game you see someone go in one turn through Modern and into information bulbing stored GS, (direct to space hubble, pop great engineer), next turn, use those new GS pop to xcom. game over. Generally speaking, you seldom see any modern or information age units other then xcom and the occasional nuke.

This! This!!!!

Modern and info age basically don't exist in FFA multiplayer because of GS bulbing and hubble =//

 

[Bl01_Z]

Looks like if they buffed honor the new Germany would become even more op since its ua gives the most incentive of any civ to go honor.

 

[fyar]

This! This!!!!

Modern and info age basically don't exist in FFA multiplayer because of GS bulbing and hubble =//

I think one way to help with this problem is to fix great scientist strength to the time that they're born, like great musicians. Sure, you can save that medieval scientist all the way to the information era. But he's still only going to give you 800 beakers of the 15,000 beakers you need for Satellites.

 

[civ54lyfe]

i vote yes on that

 

[Council 13]

I like all the changes at 1st glance except the limit of 6 planes stationed per city.

This change will make it non-viable to field a decently sized air-force until you get stealth bomber tech.

Atomic bombs / Nuclear Missiles already served to deter people just mindlessly stacking all their aircraft. This 6 plane cap just seems very anti-quality of life and removes a lot of the mid-lategame air play that I have come to enjoy.

Yes, this would be my question. Does this limit also go for missles?

 

[ddd123]

I think one way to help with this problem is to fix great scientist strength to the time that they're born, like great musicians. Sure, you can save that medieval scientist all the way to the information era. But he's still only going to give you 800 beakers of the 15,000 beakers you need for Satellites.

i totally disagree

800 anything is worth much more early than later, be that gold or resarch or other stuff
so keeping 800 research standing there for ages is a great price and you DESERVE it to be worth 15000

also im not sure its even worth, surely spending early those 800 you would snowball, getting more buildings/bonuses/tropps and so gaining in the long term much more than 15000

 

[Snes]

i totally disagree

800 anything is worth much more early than later, be that gold or resarch or other stuff
so keeping 800 research standing there for ages is a great price and you DESERVE it to be worth 15000

also im not sure its even worth, surely spending early those 800 you would snowball, getting more buildings/bonuses/tropps and so gaining in the long term much more than 15000

Obviously it is worth it because everybody does it. If it was an actual risk/reward investment, then maybe. But if one option is always the better one, then it's a false choice and bad game design that needs adjusting.

 

[fyar]

i totally disagree

800 anything is worth much more early than later, be that gold or resarch or other stuff
so keeping 800 research standing there for ages is a great price and you DESERVE it to be worth 15000

also im not sure its even worth, surely spending early those 800 you would snowball, getting more buildings/bonuses/tropps and so gaining in the long term much more than 15000

I agree with everything you said, except for one the part that I underlined. Clearly, if we adopt that change, you WOULDN'T save that great scientist to Information Era. You would spend him right away. And I think that's the point. It's silly that some civ which just developed Radar would suddenly pop 6 great scientists and then have Nanotechnology.

 

[Buccaneer]

I agree with everything you said, except for one the part that I underlined. Clearly, if we adopt that change, you WOULDN'T save that great scientist to Information Era. You would spend him right away. And I think that's the point. It's silly that some civ which just developed Radar would suddenly pop 6 great scientists and then have Nanotechnology.

So you would force an artificial time separation despite the player purposely making an investment in scientists (which has a cost) in order to have a burst in research?

 

[Birdism]

Spoiler :

I like a lot of the changes. Especially the standalone server. Only other things I'd like done without going into all minor changes would be with Pledge to Protect, Honor, and Piety.

Pledge to Protect should only be capable on those you are already Friends with as that forces you to either pay them or do a quest for them to get it.

Piety needs the opener changed to a flat bonus to faith and culture which is then boosted and moved to the holy city later on. The half cost religious buildings should be moved to the discounted faith purchases policy, and the boosted Temple gold output policy should also make Temples free of maintenance. Then that ridiculous Religious Tolerance policy should be simply changed to adding a second Pantheon to your religion, with the requirement that it's one that has already been chosen in the game. This would actually give it a chance against Liberty and Tradition, and give it an interesting start that can utilize a Religion to stay at least somewhat competitive with those two.

Honor pretty much needs a revamp. It needs some free unit maintenance, Barracks bonuses instead of garrison bonuses, and probably some other stuff. It doesn't make sense at is it is, and none of the bonuses should ever feel like they go obsolete.

I did want to mention Liberty too as well, in that I think Meritocracy should grant +2 Happy and maybe even +2 Gold as well. That'd pretty much solve Liberty in my book. There are plenty of other policy changes I'd want to make as well, but the openers I think are the highest priority right now.

I agree with all of this 100%. Good stuff.

In addition to your ideas about Honor, I'd like to give my 2 cents. I think the current finisher should be put as a social policy within the tree as the need for gold is stronger earlier on. The main reason why Honor can't compete with Tradition is the lack of growth, so I propose the following:

Finisher: Gain 1 and in your capital for every city annexed or puppeted. Gain 2 and in your capital for every city razed. Only applies once per city.

This also gives incentive to raze cities more often and not just gobble up every city you find.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

I don't think it would be too overpowered. To be honest, on a lot of games you're going to have to settle on other continents to get full use out of the Candi anyway, and having them all on the same continent would make it far easier for Pangaea. As a complete change, getting gold from trade routes that pass through your territory would be nice.

Well, I don't know if you are aware of the consequences of your proposal. If the first 3 cities would give, without restrictions, the 3+3 luxuries , then I would definitly apply the following warmonger strategy:
*Build as soon as possible 3 cities, the luxuries would compensate the unhappiness part
*trade away the copies for 15 gpt and maybe even 1 more luxury for a total of 20 gpt
*build many composite bowmen and some melee units (funding the unit upkeep with the trade income)
* attack (possibly together with some other civs for less warmonger penalty) and capture a capital located on a nice spot or which has build early wonders you want to have
* you eliminate/cripple a direct civ early on and can continue when the kriss swordmen come around for the 2nd wave

But back to reality, with the candi change you get 2 benefits from the UB. First is you can get 2 faith and +2 faith per religion with a follower in every city with candi. Second you can have the %25 modifier for great people generation in every city. I can imagine you can easily get an average of 2 religions per city for a total of 6 faith producing candi per turn. Compare the candi, producing 6 faith for 120 hammers which also provides great person generation modifier and is buildable in every city, with Stonehenge which just give 5 faith per turn for 185 hammers only in 1 city. Indonesia should definitly be played more religionbased now.

For your suggestion of changing the UA of Indonesia to something related to trade routes passing through their borders. Well it definitely is a good idea. But with the expansion already containing 3 civs (Venice, Portugal and Morocco) with a trade route related UA and Arabia's UA getting an overhaul trade route related, the chances were slim that they would introduce another civ with similar UA I think.

 

[fyar]

So you would force an artificial time separation despite the player purposely making an investment in scientists (which has a cost) in order to have a burst in research?

Yes.

At least, I think so, since I don't know what you mean by an "artificial time separation." It's not like great scientists and the investment put into them would be rendered useless with this change. They would STILL be the most important great person type, or at worst second to engineers.

For what it's worth, I think they should do the same with great writers and their political treatises, although I think that ability is less prone to abuse since there's no victory condition directly tied to culture accumulation. They already do this with great musicians... does anyone think that you should be able to save up great musicians and have their tourism strength scale up in time? If they did that, you could save up 6 musicians, and then the game would be over as soon as someone discovered Internet.

 

[civ54lyfe]

insofar at the leader of a civ being immortal, there's also an artificial time separation of the lifespan of a Great Person staying alive for a few centuries

 

[fyar]

I like a lot of the changes. Especially the standalone server. Only other things I'd like done without going into all minor changes would be with Pledge to Protect, Honor, and Piety.

Pledge to Protect should only be capable on those you are already Friends with as that forces you to either pay them or do a quest for them to get it.

Piety needs the opener changed to a flat bonus to faith and culture which is then boosted and moved to the holy city later on. The half cost religious buildings should be moved to the discounted faith purchases policy, and the boosted Temple gold output policy should also make Temples free of maintenance. Then that ridiculous Religious Tolerance policy should be simply changed to adding a second Pantheon to your religion, with the requirement that it's one that has already been chosen in the game. This would actually give it a chance against Liberty and Tradition, and give it an interesting start that can utilize a Religion to stay at least somewhat competitive with those two.

Honor pretty much needs a revamp. It needs some free unit maintenance, Barracks bonuses instead of garrison bonuses, and probably some other stuff. It doesn't make sense at is it is, and none of the bonuses should ever feel like they go obsolete.

I did want to mention Liberty too as well, in that I think Meritocracy should grant +2 Happy and maybe even +2 Gold as well. That'd pretty much solve Liberty in my book. There are plenty of other policy changes I'd want to make as well, but the openers I think are the highest priority right now.

Regarding your suggestion for Piety, my idea for Religious Freedom (a name that I MUCH prefer to Religious Tolerance) that I suggested somewhere else was to give you ALL of the pantheons in a city, not just the second most popular pantheon, and even if you don't have a majority religion. Sort of like how the Candi currently counts religions.

For realism purposes, this is clearly much more aligned with the notion of Religious Freedom: it should respect the freedom of all people of faith, not just the second one. Would you call it religious freedom if the United States welcomed Christians and Jews but not Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus? And why would that secondary religion not be respected just because the primary religion isn't over 50%?

For gameplay purposes, I think this would be a huge buff to the policy, not just because you'll generally have more pantheons, but even more importantly because you can control which pantheons you want in your city. Do you want desert folklore in a city? Just send a trade route between that city and the civ which has adopted that pantheon. Sure, you might only get 1 convert, but that's all you need. Kind of like your suggestion, you would be able to control which pantheon you want in your cities, but you could vary it up between different cities, and I think this is a more natural way of accomplishing that.

 

[bonafide11]

Has there been any speculation or hints about when the patch will be released? I don't see myself playing again until it has now.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Has there been any speculation or hints about when the patch will be released? I don't see myself playing again until it has now.

Well the 'beta' is supposed to go until the 7th. So assuming they feel confident with any fixes for issues uncovered so far (and there seem to be a few), I'd expect it shortly after the 7th.

 

[Tomatekh]

Two changes not listed in the patch notes but I noticed going through the files:

-Indonesian Candi no longer requires Fresh Water
-Samurai upgrades to Rifleman instead of Musketman (also obsoletes later)

Another undocumented change:

The American Minuteman now also has the "Golden Age from Victories" promotion (same as Brazil's Pracinha)

 

[isau]

Religious Tolerance is trash for two reasons.

One is that about three quarters of the Pantheons do nothing at all unless you have a specific resource or type of tile. The newest one added, God King, literally does nothing for any city except the capital.

Two is that the entire concept of Religion in this game is centered on being as intolerant of other religions as possible! That's literally the entire point of the Inquisitor unit. It's also why Great Prophets strip other religions from your cities when they convert them, which is considered a buff above Missionaries. You should never be trying to propogate someone else's religion. You should be doubling down on your own.

 

[Altisma]

So where is the early war rewards? They completely killed early wars to the point where it only hurts you because the trade route system is the only way to pay for yourself now.

 

[Liegence]

Just finished a German Emperor game with the beta patch. Turns out it was my best game so far on BNW. Hanse seemed beastly, going into Industrial era with +30% base Hammers in each major city, in practice, is pretty insane. Also note that your Hanse cities give extra gold to AI routes which probably makes them priority for other civs. The bonus hammers made snapping up science buildings faster which may overall offset the loss of science trades down the line.

As for the increase barb conversion, I went 2/7 in total camp conversion rate... 7 does not a sample make, but I wasn't feeling a buff. Plus my first conversion put me over the unit limit so I just deleted the brute anyway.

Overall I felt Germany is about where they need to be. I think the Hanse synergizes well with Panzers, in that if you're warring you may need to look to CS allies anyway. And who doesn't want to build Panzers faster?

Very enjoyable game. I dig the new patch.

Looking forward to a city state/diplo nerf in the next patch though. I ended up winning World Leader well before Space Race was even an option.

I shall caveat the above by saying my start was nothing spectacular, although my success is probably linked to a better understanding of BNW and not solely due to Germany's advantages.