I hate the new patch.

[shattergod]

It's a waste of a good opportunity to genuinely improve the game. Instead it feels like a lot of half-assed "fixes" that are almost comical in their deployment.

 

[redwings1340]

Do you have any specific reasons? I think there's a lot more stuff that can be improved, but almost everything specifically in there I like, and honestly, civ V is a pretty good game already (even if we all criticize it from time to time).

 

[Quineloe]

There's basically two kinds of issues here

The ones that are out of scope/budget for what they're willing to put into Civ V at this point - such as AI relying on excessive start bias and cheating to be competitive, and even then still falling to the simplest traps.

and those who are only perceived by a minority as an issue. I'm pretty sure there's very few people out here who actually are bothered for example by the poor luxury resource spread on map generation. All incense goes on this continent, all wine goes there and all ivory goes there.

 

[Forkandles]

I think I like the patch overall. I miss all my little CS friends tho

 

[Qoma]

I too hate the patch for broad, vague reasons mixed with non-specific insults aimed towards the topic in question.

Nah I'm just kidding, seems pretty ok so far.

 

[bonafide11]

I'm pretty sure there's very few people out here who actually are bothered for example by the poor luxury resource spread on map generation. All incense goes on this continent, all wine goes there and all ivory goes there.

The game is much better with resources in certain locations than if they were to be spread evenly throughout the world. It encourages trade rather than everyone already having all the resources. There's no reason for anyone to be bothered about this.

To the OP: You have to provide some sort of reasons why you hate the new patch if you want anyone to take you serious. What specifically about it don't you like? I don't see any area where it has made the game less fun to play.

 

[joshua43214]

My issues with the patch:
Modern era is still unbalanced, and things like anti-aircraft guns come much too late after the AI gets flight. This is compounded by the AI seeming to be more aggressive now. If you are trying a peaceful VC, getting to anti-aircraft is a very long way off the SV or CV tech path. This could have been fixed by a 10 year old.

The new Japan is... weird? Samurai can make fishing boats? Why not just do what people have been suggesting forever, and make a worker for water tiles.

Warmongering is even harder now

Liberty is still weak.
Honor still sucks.
Order did not need any improvement, Freedom needed it.
Commerce could use tweaking.

There is a lot more...

 

[cakes]

who is trying to get CV without airports?

 

[JanghanHong]

who is trying to get CV without airports?

When you're Byzantines who snagged, Pagoda, Mosque, Cathedral, and that +2 tourism per religious building reformation belief.

 

[redwings1340]

My issues with the patch:
Modern era is still unbalanced, and things like anti-aircraft guns come much too late after the AI gets flight. This is compounded by the AI seeming to be more aggressive now. If you are trying a peaceful VC, getting to anti-aircraft is a very long way off the SV or CV tech path. This could have been fixed by a 10 year old.

The new Japan is... weird? Samurai can make fishing boats? Why not just do what people have been suggesting forever, and make a worker for water tiles.

Warmongering is even harder now

Liberty is still weak.
Honor still sucks.
Order did not need any improvement, Freedom needed it.
Commerce could use tweaking.

There is a lot more...

Overall, I agree with most of what you're saying, with the caveat that Civ V is still an incredible game that has had so much work put in to it over the years, and we have to respect that. A lot of work was put in to this patch too, and if AI performance lives up to the patch notes, that's way more on the AI front than I expected.

For the aircraft, fighters and anti-aircraft guns now earn experience from interceptions, so that will improve things quite a bit. Still though, having nothing that can even slow down great war bombers until flight is a bit unfair for the behind civ. There is a stack limit though and great war bombers don't have that great a range, so that's something.

I have to disagree with you about freedom. Freedom is amazing. For starters, if you can combine these specialist policies and send food trade routes to keep your cities going, you can get your specialists to be:
+2 science (secularism)
-50% food (Civil Society)
-50% unhappiness with 50% longer golden ages (Universal Suffrage), in a tall empire you're going to have excess happiness anyway!
+1 production (Statue of Liberty)
+whatever the specialist does normally. Run all your specialists and use food trade routes to stop your cities from starving, and your cities will be producing everything pretty ridiculously.

You can also get:
6 maintenance free upgradable foreign legions! If you get these fast they can even be the most advanced soldiers of the era!
Arsenal of Democracy - The production bonus to troops is good already, but with this you have the ability to ally all the city states on the map without spending a dime.

Universal healthcare, freedom of the people, urbanization, and capitalism aren't bad either. New deal might work pretty well with Korea or Babylon. With the increase in production time for the space victory gold based spaceship parts might be pretty good too.

Basically, freedom is amazing and definitely does not need a buff.

 

[zenmaster]

Hmmm, can't agree with the vague unhappiness of the OP.

Does the patch make the game better? Yes.
Did it address a lot of things? Yes.
Was Firaxis obligated to do this much? Not really.

Can't complain too much given those facts.

I think with the overwhelming opinion that the Social Policy trees still need tweaking/overhaul in a few places (Honor/Piety, perhaps Liberty a bit, and something to make other later SPs more compelling vs Rationalism?) that Firaxis will do at least one more solid "balance" patch as well as continue to try to improve wonky AI behaviors as much as they can.

I give a hearty THANKS to all at Firaxis who continue to invest effort in this game to keep it playable and freshen it up. With this kind of attention devoted, I will continue to buy all future DLC and Civ-related products without so much as a second thought.

 

[fuzzatron717]

I like the patch especially Germany and the pantheons.

 

[redwings1340]

Hmmm, can't agree with the vague unhappiness of the OP.

Does the patch make the game better? Yes.
Did it address a lot of things? Yes.
Was Firaxis obligated to do this much? Not really.

Can't complain too much given those facts.

I think with the overwhelming opinion that the Social Policy trees still need tweaking/overhaul in a few places (Honor/Piety, perhaps Liberty a bit, and something to make other later SPs more compelling vs Rationalism?) that Firaxis will do at least one more solid "balance" patch as well as continue to try to improve wonky AI behaviors as much as they can.

I give a hearty THANKS to all at Firaxis who continue to invest effort in this game to keep it playable and freshen it up. With this kind of attention devoted, I will continue to buy all future DLC and Civ-related products without so much as a second thought.

This, basically this. There are a lot of things that I think could be better with this game, particularly in social policy balance (making other things compete with tradition/rationalism, removing useless policies), but overall, Civilization is a fantastic game that I've put 600 hours in to for a reason. Firaxis could have made a few token fixes and left it at that while losing very little money, but they improved the balance and gameplay pretty substantially in this patch. They did a lot of programming to get this patch ready, and we should congratulate them for the effort they put in to it before telling them why they're all terrible and why the patch sucks.

Thanks Fraxis, you've made a fantastic game, and I love everything about it. Keep on being awesome, and I'm going to definitely continue on to civ 6 when that is made!

 

[Dralix]

Hate the Drake!

 

[Vidszhite]

My issues with the patch:
Modern era is still unbalanced, and things like anti-aircraft guns come much too late after the AI gets flight. This is compounded by the AI seeming to be more aggressive now. If you are trying a peaceful VC, getting to anti-aircraft is a very long way off the SV or CV tech path. This could have been fixed by a 10 year old.

The new Japan is... weird? Samurai can make fishing boats? Why not just do what people have been suggesting forever, and make a worker for water tiles.

Warmongering is even harder now

Liberty is still weak.
Honor still sucks.
Order did not need any improvement, Freedom needed it.
Commerce could use tweaking.

There is a lot more...

I dunno, I just won a Deity CV with new Japan, and I thought the changes made it pretty balanced. It isn't Babylon tier, but it moved up a notch.

Liberty is not weak, it's just that the thing it's trying to do -- go wide -- is difficult to do on high difficulty/standard map, because the AI takes all the good land. No amount of changes to Liberty can fix that. A free great person is a phenomenal finisher, since it can be used any different number of ways: free religion, free Academy, or free wonder -- and on Deity, a free wonder can be worth it.

Honor suffers from exactly the same problem -- it isn't bad in and of itself, it's just that early warmongering on Deity is too damn hard, because of all the AI's free units and free upgrades. It could use some changes, for sure. Forcing you to garrison units and then not making those units maintenance-free works against you. No bonus to siege unit production makes classical wars a challenge. Still, it's situational, just like Piety.

Freedom needed a nerf, since it was really good at everything, even war, and it got that nerf. Order needed a buff, because its T3s barely did anything, and it got that buff. Now its Science T3 at least gives you one free GE and GS... which you're going to need more than ever now, because spaceship parts cost twice as much (because Autocracy was cheesing SV with its insane tech steal ability). Iron Curtain is fantastic now, too, even for peace. Freedom still pulls ahead with its ability to buy parts with gold, because the hard part of SV is no longer just the tech.

Commerce was good already, and now it's phenomenal, especially for wide/warmongering. What tweaks does it need? Many of its weaker policies were combined, and it's no longer so back-loaded into its finisher. The finisher is still really good, +50% happiness per lux and +1 gold per TP are all it's ever needed there. Big Ben is a really good wonder. If Commerce was any stronger, it'd be overpowered.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

The AI seems to be "smarter" now in its decisions. Maybe it's a "bug", I don't know.

Just now I was war mongering, and my biggest problem--of course--is unhappiness. So this proposal comes up to ban fur. Well, I have fur, Venice has all the votes. What the hell--give my fur to Venice so at least 30 turns later I will still have fur.

Guess what? Venice votes heavily for the ban, even though receiving a free fur from me. Which pushes me over the edge and forces me to stop my war against Catherine. Which is actually a smart move in some sense.

Anyway that never happened pre-patch. Or maybe just never happened to me. Previously you could always bribe the AI not to vote for a ban by trading it to them.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Terrible OP, thread closed. This is a discussion forum, and opening posts are meant to contain the seeds of a civil and productive discussion. There has been some discussion here, but that's in spite of the opening post, not because of it. If you just have a rant, use the rants thread. If you have something more substantive to discuss about the patch (other than simply saying "this sucks" without providing any sort of reasoning for that whatsoever), then you can try again.