[GS] Antarctic Late Summer Patch Discussion Thread

[Phoenix1595]

I continued a saved game last night, so it might just be that, but I did notice a few thing post-patch that did not seem right:

1) I was being penalized (read: negative diplo modifiers) by some AI civs for “making demands” on them, when that wasn’t the case. THEY were making demands on me. I can understand receiving neg modifiers for refusing a demand, but then it should read as such, rather than incorrectly stating I was making them. It is confusing when trying to remedy poor diplomatic relations.

2) Trade deals are out of sync. The AI wants me to give them literally 100g/turn for a luxury, and when I countered with over a half-dozen other items to reduce that gold/turn amount, they still wanted the same amount plus what I had to offer. I know the designers were trying to remedy the trade screen, but workstill needs to be done.

3) Still no auroras!! I am quite sad, but I know it is a minor thing.


On the other hand, there were still a TON of positives. Road spaghetti is gone, the AI seems to be making intelligent military choices (I watched how they now go after easy targets and win, rather than irrationally going after harder, more distant ones and inevitably lose), and, is it just me, or did the graphics improve (it seems they tinkered a bit under the hood to free up system resources, hence higher end of graphic scale)?

Also, World Builder is a great tool. Can’t wait for further developments.

Plus, I am finally able to play a true Industrial Age without worrying about climate change flooding my cities too early. Good times.

 

[Disgustipated]

Will say I appreciate the performance increases. Thank you Firaxis. Boot up time was getting longer and longer, and I believe the problem to be the more games I got into Hall of Fame (see my Hall of Fame file bug report) since I had that problem the time I attempted to load all my old saves into the Hall of Fame. Game boots up lightning fast now, like it did my first game of Gathering Storm.

Also fixed is the stuttering I was getting with DX12 (I incorrectly thought it was due to the launcher bypass, but then I realized when I removed the launcher bypass I was actually playing DX11 which gave me no issues, only DX12 gave me issues).

 

[dshirk]

2) Trade deals are out of sync. The AI wants me to give them literally 100g/turn for a luxury, and when I countered with over a half-dozen other items to reduce that gold/turn amount, they still wanted the same amount plus what I had to offer. I know the designers were trying to remedy the trade screen, but workstill needs to be done.

Can you link me to a save that demonstrates this? I would like to gather as many examples for the dev team as I can. Thank you!

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Will say I appreciate the performance increases. Thank you Firaxis. Boot up time was getting longer and longer, and I believe the problem to be the more games I got into Hall of Fame (see my Hall of Fame file bug report) since I had that problem the time I attempted to load all my old saves into the Hall of Fame. Game boots up lightning fast now, like it did my first game of Gathering Storm.

Also fixed is the stuttering I was getting with DX12 (I incorrectly thought it was due to the launcher bypass, but then I realized when I removed the launcher bypass I was actually playing DX11 which gave me no issues, only DX12 gave me issues).

I don't know if it's just coincidence of not, but I have not had my video card fan (seemingly) randomly rev up to insane levels post-patch, either.

 

[King Rad]

@dshirk - tks for a great patch to a great game. Perfect? Of course not. What is? [Well, I keep trying to convince my wife that I am, but that's another story.] I really appreciate you guys attempts to respond to real issues [and having to weed out the issues from the i'd-prefer-it-this-way comments]. I don't have a current link, but loading my saved Dido game, the AI offered me about 40 gpt for a luxury. I don't know if that's a good decision on its part or not, but i'd think not. It had offered 2 for 1 deals several times prior to the patch [e.g. cotton plus sugar for spice].

@Phoenix1595 - in my current game, the Dido save mentioned above, auroras are showing up. TBH, I hadn't noticed if they had dropped out after GS or not.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

Won a religious victory as Gandhi, T132 at the beginning of the Renaissance (Emperor/Pangaea/small). The extra missionary spread is very helpful. The trade route bonus was negligible, then again I didn't have many routes and because of the map generation, I couldn't reach the cities I wanted to anyways. Only made 4 cities and had 220 faith at the very end, but combined with Holy Order (30% discount) and Mosques and a Medievel golden age, my 8 spread missionaries were the best bang for their buck. I also snagged Earth goddess. If you like religious victory and playing tall, Gandhi is where it's at.

 

[Stilgar08]

Well if this was a free game I’d praise them for improving it but after shelling out over $150 for the game and expansions it would be nice to have a playable version. I’d say a single test game should have revealed the trade issue.

Listen, real improvement like the map search are GREAT but none of the eye candy matters if the game is broken.

Exaggeration is not proving anything. And if you paid over $ 150,- you must be lucky enough to have enough money to just not care...

Ya know, if you think an AI offer is too out of line, you could always refuse it (unless you really need the gold, of course).

Yeah, but it's sometimes really hard to tell if a deal is decent or just crazy. And it's just tempting to accept a good deal! And furthermore it shouldn't be like that - if AI values trades better and makes decent proposals and decisions it's good for the game as a whole. Trading is a major part of diplomacy in Civ and therefore vital!
P.S.: loving most of the patch and strongly believe trade is so major that we'll get a hotfix soon...

 

[Basajaun]

I don't know if it's just coincidence of not, but I have not had my video card fan (seemingly) randomly rev up to insane levels post-patch, either.

Thats hardware issue. If your card is stock (not OC) when the fan does that means there has been a load spike which bumped your cards temp to the limit.
Lowering the load (graphic quality) will do, but considering they optimized the performance, it is related, but its not a consequence of it.
Anyway, try improving your computer case airflow, or modifying the fan profile in the card. You will have better temps overall with a basic fan profile for the case and silent for the cards, than silent for the case, and high performance for the cards, as this temp spikes can not be evened out with the still warm air floating inside the case.
In the case of a laptop, theres not much you can do to balance temps than lower graphics. Ive found Antialiasing to be the most taxing option, heatwise, while it is barely noticeable in 1440p, barely worth it in 1080p. So even if you are better off now, I would recommend to investigate a bit on this, just for durability/reliability.

 

[Duuk]

Ya know, if you think an AI offer is too out of line, you could always refuse it (unless you really need the gold, of course).

when the AI surprise rush-attacks you and does that weird thing where they pummel a city hard but just inexplicably don't take the city while you're still moving units, do you just make peace and give them the city to make up for their poor combat AI?

 

[Daigotsu Max]

I've spotted an aurora!

 

[Jaybe]

when the AI surprise rush-attacks you and does that weird thing where they pummel a city hard but just inexplicably don't take the city while you're still moving units, do you just make peace and give them the city to make up for their poor combat AI?

Of course, NOT!

I am (generally) a practical person. If the game has a ‘feature’ I dislike, I will usually determine a work-around, either via my in game behavior or modding.
I am getting a bit of experience editing xml files. 3-4 pages of pre-GS file-editing documentation (I always document first). Hope to get back to some editing soon. Wish I was comfortable making real mods.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

when the AI surprise rush-attacks you and does that weird thing where they pummel a city hard but just inexplicably don't take the city while you're still moving units, do you just make peace and give them the city to make up for their poor combat AI?

That's true, but there's a difference between that and selling the AI on iron, one at a time, over and over, just because you know you can. There's benefitting from a bug (unavoidable) and then actively exploiting it (totally avoidable).

 

[Minou]

The wall change, and a large majority of the changes in the patch were very good and I think most players including myself are happy about that. I'm just saying that bugs fixes and balance changes more than once an expansion would be nice. Especially for issues that have been around for a long time that have known solutions that a single modder was able to implement. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

One would expect that large companies with teams of coders, designers, and testers would be able fix things more often than a single dude making a mod in his free time. Yeah I know, risk adverse for profit companies are risk adverse and for profit.

This sums it up thanks. I totally disagree that a player should just “refuse unfair trades” because trading has been a big part of the series for a long time. Getting 5gpt for a luxury is immersive and helpful, and a selling a few is almost necessary to get up and running early on high difficulty levels. So no trading at all is no fun but 100gpt is no fun either. It is clear reasonable trade behavior is possible as (aside from first turn great work selling bug) things were working fine before the patch.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the city state walls and some other changes, but it seems like every fixed bug brings up something new to replace it (overflow abuse was fixed but in the same patch Neighborhood gold was made easier to abuse, tMagus nerfed but pillaging made to be vastly more productive than building, and then pillaging partly fixed and trading broken).

Everyone plays differently and I respect that, but I think most people who care about Civ (I’ve loved it since Civ 2) enioy the building aspect. It is so enjoyable to plan districts and buildings and watch them get more productive over the centuries. That’s why it kind of sucks when your Commercial Hub and Market that took 30 turns to build is yielding 10gpt but you can get 50gpt for one resource or 200g instantly with one pillage. It makes it feel pointless. The charm of Civ is balancing building, diplomacy, and warfare (and popping goody huts) and it’s hard to enjoy when there one action is grossly overpowered compared to others.

 

[Wizard-Bob]

but it seems like every fixed bug brings up something new to replace it

Software development and maintenance can be a difficult thing. Civ is a very complex beast with lots of moving parts. I'm constantly amazed it works as well as it does

 

[qadams]

I've spotted an aurora!

Yeah, I saw one too in the post-patch game I started playing this morning.

 

[leandrombraz]

so it's a fix that fixes nothing, you can still switch to these policies for 1 turn, upgrade everything, then switch to something else.

I don't think they was trying to stop that, imo it's a valid strategy, you should be rewarded for planning ahead. The difference is that now you need two slots to get a full discount, which can get costly if you don't have enough military slots and need to sacrifice wild slots for it. Upgrading every unit you have in one turn not only require to do some smart play with civics but isn't always possible to do because you might not have the gold and resource to upgrade all in one turn, which is likely in the case of resources since there's a cap to how much you can have.

 

[criZp]

upgrading all your units cheaply the moment someone declares war on you is not "planning ahead". and you don't need two slots after urbanization.

 

[Abaxial]

Continuing a game as Sweden, (at 1020 AD) I notice some odd things:

1) The button for displaying great works is missing.
2) Calling up the Great Person display, I see only Great Engineer, Artist and Musician. Against all the others it says "All individuals of this type have already been allocated".
3) The improved reports mod isn't working, though it shows as enabled.
4) In additional content, I see about 12 entries for "Untitled map mod" some of which are enabled and others disabled.

Bugs?

I've also not seen a single city state, but this may be luck. There's not much point in playing on as Sweden with no GPs.

 

[DWilson]

Continuing a game as Sweden, (at 1020 AD) I notice some odd things:

1) The button for displaying great works is missing.
2) Calling up the Great Person display, I see only Great Engineer, Artist and Musician. Against all the others it says "All individuals of this type have already been allocated".
3) The improved reports mod isn't working, though it shows as enabled.
4) In additional content, I see about 12 entries for "Untitled map mod" some of which are enabled and others disabled.

Bugs?

I've also not seen a single city state, but this may be luck. There's not much point in playing on as Sweden with no GPs.

Sounds like patch complications.

 

[MrRadar]

Another example of new trade.
Emperor, Standard, date and context (Classical):

I thought Phil was being generous:

Spoiler :

But he was a bit of a miser in comparison with Dido:

Spoiler :

@dshirk I'm uploading the save, in case you need it. Please hotfix soon(tm). Or else we'll outbid Mansa Musa in buying the world