Summer 2017 Patch Notes Discussion

[jbavon]

The 'commerce' government is a leaf tech now. I think thats new? Couldnt find it in the changelog.

 

[bbbt]

Slightly weakens the Great Person that gives you instant walls with free maintenance.

They gave him an extra charge to compensate.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I'm liking pretty much everything here except, as others have said, the settler cost increase. Maybe I'll want to pay attention to walls now, especially if going for a culture victory.

Don't know yet if my incomplete Pericles game (with a bunch of mods) will load, but I won't mind too much if it doesn't, as it will be fun to pay him again sometime with the Acropolis buff.

I have a similar issue with my current Aztec Game. Was just on the verge of completing the Forbidden City too.....shame .

 

[LoneDragon]

They gave him an extra charge to compensate.

Missed that because I couldn't remember his name. Thanks!

 

[Onii-chan]

The Restart button is obviously a wonderful (albeit long overdue addition)

The Aqueduct and Sewers production cost reduction was desperately needed. I'm still not sure I've ever built a Sewer except for when I literally had nothing else to build before; maybe that'll change now

Battering Rams and Siege Towers no longer working against Urban Defenses is also something that really should've been fixed ages ago since it was super broken and completely illogical, so I'm glad to finally see that out of the way

Monarchy is a bit better now. Before I pretty much only ever used it temporarily since it's the first T2 government you unlock (normally), but maybe it'll be a bit more viable in general with this

Moving Urban Defenses from Civil Engineering to Steel is interesting. Not only are we jumping from the Civics tree to the Tech tree, but I often find myself delaying the lower part of the Tech tree around the Industrial/Modern era, so with this there's a great incentive to not do that any longer. Delaying Urban Defenses is pretty dangerous after all. Good change I think

Finally the Civ balance changes are awesome. Norway's buff is extremely welcome and Scythia's nerf makes them at least somewhat acceptable now (albeit probably still the strongest civ in the game). The changes to Greece and France seem reasonable too, and Kongo's was probably necessary as well but I think if they're nerfing that then they should really nerf the writer/artist/musician points from the Russian Lavras as well because those were even more out of control

The UI enhancements also seem reasonable. The city bombardment alert has been sorely missed, and having tech/civic boosts visible on the next turn button is great because I often find myself clicking it on habit and then realize a second afterwards that I hadn't switched tech/civic to optimize my boosts yet, which was pretty annoying. Hopefully this'll help resolve that problem

Oh and the AI becoming more aggressive as you approach victory sounds great. I just hope that'll also mean it'll be more competent at trying to counteract your victory progress through peaceful means too, because trying to kill you with fire isn't always the best way to do that

Overall I think this patch looks great honestly. Could very well be the best one so far

 

[Peserwin]

Started a new game with big Nubian momma and I've noticed a big change in AI: they are killing all CS and are not building any wonders. I mean, all city states are eliminated in medieval era. Anyone else having the same? Also: no AI ships

Edit: never mind, had AI+ mod still active. Time to sleep

 

[bbbt]

Missed that because I couldn't remember his name. Thanks!

Yeah, I only know who he was since I checked to see who they were adding an extra charge to. I can't think of the last time I managed to get a great engineer while the great people were still in the medieval era.

 

[PhilBowles]

@PhilBowles
I'll withold comments on the overall change in production costs until I've done the Math but I will have to correct you on the identity of Civilization.

I don't know where you got the idea that Civilization has always been a wargame but I will oppose that.

Civilization is first and foremost not a game about war but a game about Civilization. It inculcates War but does not Revolve around it as far as the idea behind the game goes; although it has been poorly executed as of late.

To the extent that Civilization is a game about Civilization, to that same extent it cannot revolve around war.

And thus the disatisfaction towards the wrong direction this patch.

I've been playing the game since Civ I was released. From the start the game has had a bias towards greater diversity in units than in buildings (for instance, Civ I had 24 military units and 21 non-spaceship buildings - two of which were walls and barracks, which were of no use without the military aspect, and most others of which were production facilities or otherwise useful for military as well as civilian purposes), tech advantages being largely focused on giving militarily relevant advantages, it's had no significant way other than warfare to interact with opposing civs' strategies instead of just racing to the finish, generally aggressive AIs, and winning through warfare has been an approach favoured by the system. The game was originally inspired by a board game, and most board games of similar scope are militaristic (the original Civ board game rather less so than most, but also much less so than any computer incarnation of Civ).

The basic game structure is that of a wargame - a wargame with a campaign map and supporting non-military elements, but the same can be said of Total War. Yes, it's nominally about civilisation, but claiming that it's not a wargame because of its name is a bit like claiming that Starcraft is about crafting stars instead of fighting.

The idea that Civ isn't a wargame at heart seems to derive mostly from the Civ IV crowd, who grew up with a game whose non-military elements were much more developed than they were in the earlier games, and that at least had rudimentary systems to model such things as culture that allowed some degree of interaction with other civs that wasn't based in warfare.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Noooooo! to Proselytizer nerf! I loved that one (probably a good move, but still)

Yeah, gonna miss it, but that promotion was way OP.

 

[LoneDragon]

You can force-start the download. Right-click on the game name and select manage downloads or something like that, then just click the download icon.

Attempting to launch the game will also start the download. I do it all the time. You don't even have to actually launch the game when the download finishes.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Seems the patch introduced more bugginess with the hidden agendas that usually don't activate until the appropriate tech is earned are showing up early.

Alliances are no longer a given. They used to accept alliances without question. But now Peter won't make one with me after declaring friendship.

Which I think is a good thing, as long as it's not too hard to become allies. In my pre-patch game, I am currently allied to almost every Civ on my continent....which does seem a bit naff.

 

[kaspergm]

Barbarian camp art will now update as the game progresses into later eras

But still no (clickable) notification when a new camp spawns? Oh well, maybe next time. At least we got the restart button.

Seriously, though, I think most changes in this patch looks good. I'm not keen on the increased building cost - if anything, most late-game buildings were too expensive as it were. But that can be modded.

 

[gunnergoz]

Can anyone confirm that the save setup options also saves the mods last selected? It seems to for me. I'd prefer that mods be selected separately and saved separately. I tried to start the same setup options with different sets of mods and it seems that the setup options freezes the mods as last set when the option was defined.

 

[Browd]

" increased per settler cost bump by 50"
Bye bye peaceful builds, just encoutrages more war

Yeah, 50% seems excessive. 25% would have been more sensible....and maybe with more ways to boost settler production outside of the Colonization Policy.

Note that the +50% increase only applies to the per settler cost increment, not gross settler cost. Prior to the patch, the relevant parameter was CostProgressionParam1="20" and post-patch it's CostProgressionParam1="30"

It's certainly a nerf to settler spam, but unlikely to be enough to cause players to migrate en masse to domination-oriented expansion strategies.

 

[WillowBrook]

I have a similar issue with my current Aztec Game. Was just on the verge of completing the Forbidden City too.....shame .

My game loaded and mostly works, but I can't start new districts or open the government screen. I'm guessing it's a CQUI issue that hopefully will be fixed once that mod is updated for the patch.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

hmmm, the start of CS displomacy and UN?
Also you cannot reset trade routes by left clicking a foreign unit

View attachment 474838

I want the CiV ability to bully City-States & gift them units back again. As well as bringing back the Diplomatic Option of making a City-State "under your protection" (which might require them to move that Cassus Belli back to the earlier part of the game, & maybe granting you an envoy if you fulfil a promise to protect them).

 

[Sherlock]

So the beginning game is still a barb fest? Where you'll be at turn 12 and have four barbs in your territory?

And the CS's still crank out ridiculous amounts of units?

How hard could it be to fix that stuff?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

So the beginning game is still a barb fest? Where you'll be at turn 12 and have four barbs in your territory?

And the CS's still crank out ridiculous amounts of units?

How hard could it be to fix that stuff?

What is broken? Strong barbarians are by design. The strong city-states are too, since there are fewer disadvantages to capturing one, plus they have to deal with barbs too.

 

[Wingednosering]

The font changes are definitely a bug. They don't resize properly in windowed mode and generally provide too little negative space on the diplo buttons.

Combine that with the new nuclear war messages and the new CS UI upgrades and it seems to me that we got some buggy features from the expansion.

Spoiler everybody: diplomacy is being focused on for the first expansion. I see a new victory condition on the horizon .

 

[gunnergoz]

I like the barbs so much I play with a mod that gives me 3X as many. Fun for All! And a few stolen settlers sweeten the pot now and again...