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

[alpaca]

I followed a couple strategy threads where players quickly annexed a bunch of cities and were down to 37 Since they were close to winning, they pushed on and won. Imagine what it would be like if they had rebels pop up on half of the globe?

I think the correct play is to raze them, especially with rebels.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, but razing produces the same unhappiness as annexing now. So you still have slow down expansion until the cities are gone.

 

[Monsterzuma]

Did anyone notice the huge nerf to Libraries in this patch..? The specialists were the reason I always built libraries, the extra science was just a nice extra. They're going from being the absolute backbone of the Civ5 economy to being just a lousy bonus building.

 

[Ahriman]

Yeah, but razing produces the same unhappiness as annexing now. So you still have slow down expansion until the cities are gone.

Sounds good to me.
Slowing military expansion is desirable. Its far too easy to go on snowballing conquest rampages.

Stronger cities will also help.

to being just a lousy bonus building

They're still a 50% science booster. Not very lousy.
I think its good that they're no longer a must-build-everywhere no-brainer.

Mass great scientist generation was broken.

We can quibble about the exact details of a fix (I would have nerfed the great scientist lightbulb ability, rather than removing them from the early game all together), but the new system is likely to have fewer imbalanced strats than the old one.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Scientists are now roughly parallel to Engineers -- harder to get out early, fun special ability. Artists and Merchants have blander abilities but are easier to get out.