12/3 patch balance thoughts, The good, the bad, and the ugly

[neilkaz]

Here are all the 12/3 upcoming patch balance changes and I'll discuss my thoughts (many of them negative). Please note that I usually play Immortal Small single land mass maps. Those who play different levels/maps may have differing thoughts, but if you reply, please mention what level(s) you usually play on, if you don't mind.

AI

* AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory if they are wealthy. (Added 12/3)
(NK) I hope this isn't a game breaker on Immortal and Deity. In my last Persia game, Askia had nearly 40k gold. There will be no stopping a big civ with that much gold from buying the UN vote. I hope I don't have to turn this LAME victory condition off, after this patch.

* AI more effective with building, moving, and using aircraft and anti-aircraft more effectively. (Added 12/3) (NK) OK good.

* AI more likely to effectively use siege units in a city attack. (Added 12/3) (NK) This is good. The AI too often has ranged units pounding a city, but fails to make room for a melee unit to take it quickly.

* Better nuke targeting by AI. (Added 12/3) (NK) I was unaware that the AI made nukes !!

* Tactical AI Tuning: Reduce chance of AI civs making "suicide" attacks. (Added 12/3)
(NK) Good.

* Multiple tweaks and bug fixes. (Added 12/3) (NK) There are so many to fix.


GAMEPLAY

* Increased city strength ramp-up based on technology. (Added 12/3)(NK) I suspect this is good, but I hope it doesn't become too difficult to take cities, noting that they also will heal quicker.

* Catapults and Trebuchets now weaker against units but stronger VS cities, and reduced effectiveness of Archers & Crossbowmen (and their UUs) VS cities. (Added 12/3) (NK) I suspect this is OK, but I wish it weren't so easy for a melee unit to kill a seige unit.

* Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). (Added 12/3)
(NK) I really don't like this. Do we really need Firaxis to baby sit us so that we don't try to win a cultural victory via the LAME tactic of dumping cities allready owned. OK perhaps this is to prevent this in MP, but it isn't needed for SP as no one with an ounce of intregrity would win this way. I also fear that Firaxis will screw up and when you raze an immediately conquered city, it will add to total culture costs. The fix for that, is that cities, when razed immediately should NOT count as annexed but should simply be puppets. This also prevents the annoyance of having to set production for a city being razed and also will help fix the reloaded save bug when razing.

* Reduced effects of Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy (Happiness per city). (Added 12/3)
(NK) I don't like this at all! Unlike many here, I don't see ICS and REX as an issue nor the need to try to prevent it. The AI's expand like a fertilized patch of weeds and build cities anywhere and everywhere and have no happiness contraints on higher levels. Why shouldn't we humans do the same? How are we to compete on Immortal or Deity or even Emperor, unless we constantly war to try to knock down a strong AI civ and it isn't always possible to get at them easily on some maps?!? Also this makes the liberty tree less valuable and reducing any of the early SP's isn't good nor needed.

* Reduced points from Wonders & Cities, increased points for population. (Added 12/3)
(NK) I guess this is for score, which doesn't matter to me.

* Reduced culture needed for first plot acquisition. (Added 12/3) (NK) OK

* New Building: Circus Maximus (National Wonder for happiness track). (Added 12/3)
* New Building: National Treasury (National Wonder for economic track). (Added 12/3)
(NK) These seem OK and I may need the happy wonder.

* Unhappiness beyond a certain point breeds rebels within your empire, based on the number of cities a player has. (Added 12/3)
(NK) A throwback to previous civ games and one that I don't see the need for. Again an attempt to nerf ICS. ICS doesn't need much if any nerfing. Just try to expand too soon on a high level of difficulty and you get dog-piled by DOW's. If you don't have lots of cities in midgame, how do you compete vs AI's with a dozen+ cities and huge advantages in tech and production and gold and happiness??

* Reduced amount of food needed for cities to grow at larger sizes. (Added 12/3)
(NK) This is really GOOD.

* Tradition branch balance (Landed Elite and Monarchy improvements). (Added 12/3)
(NK) Good.

* Liberty branch balance (Settler training bonus now only applies to capital). (Added 12/3) (NK) ROFL this isn't needed !! Why reduce the liberty tree at all, it and honor are the only decent early SP's anyhow.

* Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this). (Added 12/3) (NK) I can see the point here, but, while in the minority, I don't see the need to seriously nerf REX/ICS.

* 3 new additional Natural Wonders added to gameplay, with accompanying “rarity” code. (Added 12/3)(NK) OK

* Multiple Tech Tree tweaks to address “slingshot” tech exploits. (Added 12/3)
(NK) The way to reduce slingshots is to prevent more than 1 GS from being saved. I only save a GS for a few turns anyhow and don't save SP.

* Killing a barb inside a city-state's territory now gives a 5-turn buffer where there is no Influence intrusion penalty. (Added 12/3)
(NK) What about the penalty you get for moving thru the CS to get to the barb camp?
IMHO, when a CS calls for barb aid, there should be no intrusion penalty unless units are inside boundaries for 5 turns and this penalty also should not happen for 5 turns after the barb camp is killed so your units can get home if they need to pass thru the CS.

* Reduced and balanced combat bonuses. (Added 12/3)(NK) Will need to see these but probably good.

UI
* Additional updates to the Global Politics screen. (Added 12/3)
* Added game option to disable turn-blocking promotions and policy choices. (Added 12/3) (NK) I am in the minority but I'll still take promotions and SP immediately and not save them.


DIPLO

* Additional AI attitude tool-tips for cases that were not already covered. (Added 12/3)

I appolgize if this belongs in General Discussions, but I posted it in Strategy since I think the game will be considerably harder now. I greatly fear that it will be next to impossible to prevent the AI from winning a lame financial (bribe CS UN vote) victory on Immortal and Deity. All these REX/ICS constraints will make it clearly more difficult to stop the AI from winning by spaceship on Deity and likely Immortal as well.

The game should be balanced for the higher levels of play and I hope Firaxis isn't over nerfing here.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[wurstburst]

* AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory if they are wealthy. (Added 12/3)
(NK) I hope this isn't a game breaker on Immortal and Deity. In my last Persia game, Askia had nearly 40k gold. There will be no stopping a big civ with that much gold from buying the UN vote. I hope I don't have to turn this LAME victory condition off, after this patch.

Good analysis.

I don't understand this one point though. People have complained without end about: 1) how the AI is too easy to beat in general, 2) how lame it is to beat the computer with Diplomacy when they won't spend their money on CS and 3) how CS are broken. In one fell swoop, this addresses all these issues. The AI will be harder to beat as it will have more viable ways to win, the AIs will actually use that extra money for something important (like winning the game, which is the point, isn't it) and humans will have a harder time abusing CS when the AI grabs them and fights with money to keep and steal them away. I can't wait to see the first bidding war for CS.

 

[Louis XXIV]

* Unhappiness beyond a certain point breeds rebels within your empire, based on the number of cities a player has. (Added 12/3)
(NK) A throwback to previous civ games and one that I don't see the need for. Again an attempt to nerf ICS. ICS doesn't need much if any nerfing. Just try to expand too soon on a high level of difficulty and you get dog-piled by DOW's. If you don't have lots of cities in midgame, how do you compete vs AI's with a dozen+ cities and huge advantages in tech and production and gold and happiness??

I actually think this was to prevent players from ignoring happiness entirely. This was an early strategy that works well if with domination victory.

 

[Putmalk]

I actually think this was to prevent players from ignoring happiness entirely. This was an early strategy that works well if with domination victory.

How does one dominate with the unhappiness combat penalty?

 

[Louis XXIV]

Lots and lots of archers. The AI sucks tactically, so you can win even with a -33% penalty. There some old strategy threads here. I haven't heard anything about it in awhile. Maybe those who wanted to exploit strategic loopholes found ICS more appealing.

 

[Mannu]

tl;dr; He uses REX and ICS on diety and is complaining because they are being nerfed.

 

[Shilkanni]

I disagree with any of your points that I will summarise as "Now the AI might be unbeatable on Immortal".

Diplomatic victory can be stopped even if they have infinite money, by killing the side pursuing it, allying with citystates before them and declaring war on them, Conquering them, or winning the game in the first 200 turns.

Weakening ICS is fine with me, it's so much stronger than building up big cities at the moment, I'd like there to be more of a strategic choice, maybe advantages to each method. I don't necessarily agree with their approach for it, I'd rather see the advantages of bigger cities and smaller empires 'buffed' - like making the mid-late game buildings better and cheaper, or reducing the social policy base ramp-up cost so that smaller empires get a lot more social policies.

 

[Sofar Sogood]

I don't understand this one point though.

I think the issue is that the AI has a tendency to end up with way too much gold, so it'd probably win any spending wars you get into with it. Hence, it wins Diplomacy. :X

Of course, this may spill over into having the AI just spend their loads of cash all over City States and grab a monopoly on them.

Ick.

 

[Bibor]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but can't one just bribe all the required city states on voting turn? That means you need to have enough money to bribe them all, but doesn't put the AI at an unfair advantage.

 

[TPQ]

tl;dr; He uses REX and ICS on diety and is complaining because they are being nerfed.

Not trying to be unpleasant but honestly, if you cant be bothered to read a post, why even try to comment on it? Why post, if you didn't even read what you're posting about? How can you possibly think you have anything to add when you literally don't know what you're posting about?

FYI, the OP was far more balanced in assessment than you obviously assumed...

 

[pi-r8]

Good analysis.

I don't understand this one point though. People have complained without end about: 1) how the AI is too easy to beat in general, 2) how lame it is to beat the computer with Diplomacy when they won't spend their money on CS and 3) how CS are broken. In one fell swoop, this addresses all these issues. The AI will be harder to beat as it will have more viable ways to win, the AIs will actually use that extra money for something important (like winning the game, which is the point, isn't it) and humans will have a harder time abusing CS when the AI grabs them and fights with money to keep and steal them away. I can't wait to see the first bidding war for CS.

It's a problem if it goes from one extreme to the other. Right now, it's way, way too easy to win a diplo victory because the AIs never bribe city states, no matter how much gold they have. If you change it so that the AI's will try to do that, an AI will win easily, and you have no hope of stopping them because they get such massive amounts of gold on high levels. Hopefully it will at least be balanced on prince-king-emperor, though, which is really what matters.

Overall I basically agree with the OP. They're using a lot of heavy-handed methods to try and make ICS impossible, when they need to try and develop the economy more to make complex building strategies actually viable. If the only thing worth building is more settlers, and you just CAN'T because of an arbitrary happiness limit, that's a problem.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

* AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory if they are wealthy. (Added 12/3)

Many AI's will be very wealthy, so many will pursue the diplo victory. But each city state only has 1 ally. So the AI's, collectively, would be weakened. This leaves you open to capture the city-states after they dumped all the gold in.

 

[EscapedGoat]

I like all changes relating to balancing combat, improving diplomacy & fixing bugs. It's all going in the right direction.

What I don't like is the aproach to balancing vertical and horizontal growth - the approach is too heavy-handed and convoluted and out to "nerf" ICS. Example: happy buildings only give +happiness up to number of citizens – OK, but I thought we had a global happiness system? Why introduce “bastardization” at this stage?

IMO they should focus on making vertical growth as attractive if not more than horizontal – horizontal expansion should only be “best” if you gain access to resources, rivers, strategic placement, etc, not because building another city is allways your best return on happiness AND hammers invested. It should never make sense to make “crappy” cities just for the sake of it. Vertical growth should give the best returns. Fix the cost/benefit of growing cities and people will grow their cities.

Reducing the food requirements for higher growth is good, and I really hope the reduced culture requirements for tile acquisition go for tiles beyond the first one as well, as this is yet another reason ICS is strong (no need for slow tile aquistion, you get it for free from your settling grid)

 

[LAnkou]

I like the option to remove "auto-SP"...
Wonder what will be the changes to SP and tech tree...

I wonder how hard happiness will be to sustain: ressources, buildings, wonders and natural wonders...
I suspect ressource trading will be a must for larger empires.

 

[alpaca]

I like all changes relating to balancing combat, improving diplomacy & fixing bugs. It's all going in the right direction.

What I don't like is the aproach to balancing vertical and horizontal growth - the approach is too heavy-handed and convoluted and out to "nerf" ICS. Example: happy buildings only give +happiness up to number of citizens – OK, but I thought we had a global happiness system? Why introduce “bastardization” at this stage?

IMO they should focus on making vertical growth as attractive if not more than horizontal – horizontal expansion should only be “best” if you gain access to resources, rivers, strategic placement, etc, not because building another city is allways your best return on happiness AND hammers invested. It should never make sense to make “crappy” cities just for the sake of it. Vertical growth should give the best returns. Fix the cost/benefit of growing cities and people will grow their cities.

Reducing the food requirements for higher growth is good, and I really hope the reduced culture requirements for tile acquisition go for tiles beyond the first one as well, as this is yet another reason ICS is strong (no need for slow tile aquistion, you get it for free from your settling grid)

I would rather say the problem is in the very low cost of settling cities, not in the bad returns of vertical growth. I think vertical growth is ok, even though some buildings could use a buff and the gold/hammer ratio of purchasing things be changed, but the real culprit is that there is virtually no cost to founding new cities, except for a happiness cost that you can offset with fairly little trouble. Just adding any kind of city maintenance that doesn't use the happiness system will do the trick if it's high enough, and optimally a faster increase than linear. If you make settlers more expensive, REX becomes increasingly difficult to pull off and growing your cities becomes much more attractive.

Nerfing happiness, I agree, is not the way to balance ICS vs large cities. I also dislike the hard cap feeling you get out of the happiness balancing, but with just happiness there simply is no other way to do it. And the devs seem set on that approach.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but can't one just bribe all the required city states on voting turn? That means you need to have enough money to bribe them all, but doesn't put the AI at an unfair advantage.

Who gets the final turn? The only concern I have is if they could bribe them all on turn 10 after you've already gone. Personally, I'd like a one turn delay between payment and alliance status (if you hit first place in influence, the other civ gets a message that they are no longer allies and, next turn, you get a message saying you've become an ally). That way, on turn 9, if you get a message saying you've lost your ally, you have a full turn to correct it.

 

[KingMorgan]

This patch and the 3/12 update is a bit of a joke, I think Firaxis are running ideas up the flagpole to see who salutes (and who salutes the hardest). I really think they have no clue where to take Civ5.

Happiness caps per city? Really? Almost killes the princple of global happiness.
AI going for Diplo - very difficult to balance properly (even if you know what your doing)
High pop cities grow faster - even less reason for a Hospital
Tech tree changes - Not keen to slingshots nerfed, esp when your forced to take SPs.

Overall i'm dispointed, not only with the game but with the incompentant and seemingly lack of basic understanding of what makes Civ special - from the very people that are mean't to understand.

 

[Slowpoke]

Honestly, I gotta disagree with every single word you've said You're not looking at the alternatives I think morgan.

 

[The_Trooper]

I'm very new to the game and have only played on the easier levels, but couldn't you cut down the amount the AI can bribe the City States by trading with them frequently. Any thing that involves them giving you money.

Don't know how practical this is on the harder settings

 

[humbe]

* AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory if they are wealthy. (Added 12/3)
(NK) I hope this isn't a game breaker on Immortal and Deity. In my last Persia game, Askia had nearly 40k gold. There will be no stopping a big civ with that much gold from buying the UN vote. I hope I don't have to turn this LAME victory condition off, after this patch.

This is a great change. Sounds like you don't want the AI to become smarter. IF this change makes AI impossible to beat as he always win on diplo, that means AI cheating can be nerfed without making the game easier. And that is the main goal of the AI in my mind. Making it so smart that it doesn't need to cheat to beat players.

* Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). (Added 12/3)
(NK) I really don't like this. Do we really need Firaxis to baby sit us so that we don't try to win a cultural victory via the LAME tactic of dumping cities allready owned. OK perhaps this is to prevent this in MP, but it isn't needed for SP as no one with an ounce of intregrity would win this way. I also fear that Firaxis will screw up and when you raze an immediately conquered city, it will add to total culture costs. The fix for that, is that cities, when razed immediately should NOT count as annexed but should simply be puppets. This also prevents the annoyance of having to set production for a city being razed and also will help fix the reloaded save bug when razing.

This sounds like another great change. We don't want people winning at higher levels only managing to do it through some sort of taking advantage of the system. On the other hand, it shouldn't ruin your social policies if you invade a couple of cities that you want to raze, just because it takes a few turns to raze them. But as long as the cities doesn't count before you've annexed (without razing) them, it should be all good. I agree about not having raze count as annexed though. Sounds a bit stupid.

* Reduced effects of Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy (Happiness per city). (Added 12/3)
(NK) I don't like this at all! Unlike many here, I don't see ICS and REX as an issue nor the need to try to prevent it. The AI's expand like a fertilized patch of weeds and build cities anywhere and everywhere and have no happiness contraints on higher levels. Why shouldn't we humans do the same? How are we to compete on Immortal or Deity or even Emperor, unless we constantly war to try to knock down a strong AI civ and it isn't always possible to get at them easily on some maps?!? Also this makes the liberty tree less valuable and reducing any of the early SP's isn't good nor needed.

Dunno how big the reduction is. It is not overpowered for normal games, but it might be for ICS. Sprawling tons of cities has not been intended to be the best strategy, so if that's the best way to beat hard difficulties it should be nerfed. Again, stop having loopholes for players to take advantage,
making the AIs have to cheat a lot to compensate.

* Reduced culture needed for first plot acquisition. (Added 12/3) (NK) OK

Sounds like a good change. Even in games where I've built a lot of culture buildings, I'm still not expanding much at all into the 3 hex range without buying loads of hexes.

* Unhappiness beyond a certain point breeds rebels within your empire, based on the number of cities a player has. (Added 12/3)
(NK) A throwback to previous civ games and one that I don't see the need for. Again an attempt to nerf ICS. ICS doesn't need much if any nerfing. Just try to expand too soon on a high level of difficulty and you get dog-piled by DOW's. If you don't have lots of cities in midgame, how do you compete vs AI's with a dozen+ cities and huge advantages in tech and production and gold and happiness??

You compete by making smarter choices and playing brighter than the AI. If there is no way to beat the AI when he cheats like a maniac, then great, it doesn't have to cheat that much to be a challenge. It is only a problem if they make the upper difficulties so hard that they are useless as noone will ever be able to beat them.. We're not there though.

* Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this). (Added 12/3) (NK) I can see the point here, but, while in the minority, I don't see the need to seriously nerf REX/ICS.

This is actually a REX/ICS boost, not a nerf. When you have many big cities, you might want to have some small ones giving more happiness than they use themselves. This will no longer be possible. For REX/ICS your city size is small anyways, and the whole point is that each small city counters its own happiness reduction. (Unless you try to make it without caring about happiness to begin with.

* Killing a barb inside a city-state's territory now gives a 5-turn buffer where there is no Influence intrusion penalty. (Added 12/3)
(NK) What about the penalty you get for moving thru the CS to get to the barb camp?
IMHO, when a CS calls for barb aid, there should be no intrusion penalty unless units are inside boundaries for 5 turns and this penalty also should not happen for 5 turns after the barb camp is killed so your units can get home if they need to pass thru the CS.

Yes.. CS shouldn't be mad at you for helping them.

I appolgize if this belongs in General Discussions, but I posted it in Strategy since I think the game will be considerably harder now. I greatly fear that it will be next to impossible to prevent the AI from winning a lame financial (bribe CS UN vote) victory on Immortal and Deity. All these REX/ICS constraints will make it clearly more difficult to stop the AI from winning by spaceship on Deity and likely Immortal as well.

The game should be balanced for the higher levels of play and I hope Firaxis isn't over nerfing here.

.. neilkaz ..

I totally disagree. The game should not allow players to take advantage of silly game breaking mechanics, making the AI need to cheat a lot to compensate. Remove loopholes and adjust the difficulty levels such that AI's don't need to cheat that badly, while being equally hard to face.