April 2021 Update - Patch Notes Discussion

[Aurelesk]

I didn’t expect too much from the update, and I am surprisingly content from it. It is way bigger than I expect, and Firaxis even dares to add a brand new effect to Tourism. There are so many things I want to try out. Bravo! Except they didn’t make drastic changes to [insert your country’s civilization] by making it extremely powerful and extremely fun to play. Consequently, this update is obviously a total failure with no chance of any redemption!

Joke aside, I might have hoped the team would rethink more civilizations, like many other players here. France was my top contender. They did make the Garde Impériale better (70 Combat Strength!) and the Château is more flexible (same requirement as a Mekewap but not as powerful), but… I want MORE! No! This is not a child whim! I am a grow-up now!
I feel awkwardly ungrateful to say this, but they are a lot of Culture + Gold tile improvements like the Great Wall, the Pairidaeza and maybe the Golf Course to some extent. The Château was the least impressive of the bunch, so more prone to face drastic change. Basically, I imagined something like that:

GRAND TOUR
Cities gain +5% Culture, +5% Food, +10% Production towards Wonders and +10% Tourism for each Wonders they have. Already built Wonders that are owned by France can be rebuilt to another city.

GARDE IMPÉRIALE
French unique Industrial era melee unit that replaces the Infantry Line. Stronger by 3 Combat Strength, it also gains +10 Combat Strength when fighting on your capital’s continent. Combat victories provide Great General points equal to 25% of the base Combat Strength of the defeated unit (on Standard Speed).

CHÂTEAU
Once the Feudalism civic is discovered, unlocks the Builder ability to construct a Château.
+1 Culture, +0.5 Housing and +1 Appeal.
+1 Culture if next to a River.
+1 Food if adjacent to a Luxury resource.
+1 additional Food at Sanitation technology.
+1 additional Culture at Cultural Heritage civic.
Provides Tourism after researching Flight. Cannot be adjacent to another Château.

CATHERINE'S FLYING SQUADRON (unchanged)
Gain 1 extra level of Diplomatic Visibility with every civilization. Receives a free Spy with the Castles technology. All Spies start as Agents with a free Promotion.

CATHERINE'S MAGNIFICENCES
Improved Luxury resources receive +1 Culture, up to +2 if adjacent to Theatre Square districts. May initiate the Court Festival project in any city with a Theater Square district, yielding 10% of the Production cost as Culture and Tourism for each Luxury.

COURT OF LOVE
All Great Works yield +1 Loyalty to cities holding them, and cause -1 Loyalty in foreign cities within 10 tiles. Each city skips the Free City step and joins Eleanor’s civilization if it rebels from Loyalty pressure but has received most of Loyalty pressure from her.

EXPLANATION
Grand tour: Rebuilt wonders erase the original. Bonuses triggering at completion, like the units from Statue of Zeus, do not work again. It is rather gimmicky, but it gives personnality and it is an echo to the Liberty Statue: built in France, and assembled in USA. You could say that that new ability will probably lead to a one powerful cultural and populous city, further cemented by the ability to relocate Wonders to that city. But that's France and Paris in a nutshell.
Garde Impériale : It is 68 CS here because I didn't thought they are going to give 70 in the game! The scaling of the Great General point allows to prevent to use Barbarians as Great General point generator (one Scout? 10 points!), but it is overall stronger since it is better against 40+ Combat Strength units.
Château: Rivers were too valuable, I changed it for a more common restriction: not adjacent to another Château. The game did also recognise this, and traded them for the Mekewap restrictions. I traded the Gold for Food / Housing. I wanted to give the Château more personality by differenciate it from the Great Wall and the Pairidaeza that also give Culture and Gold. More flexible, you will still rather want to use them for National Parks (but City Park is better) or on a river as usual (for good Culture), but it would be less powerful as Culture generator overall.
Catherine Flying's Squadron: Except the wording, the ability is the same.
Catherine's Magnificence: The project takes all luxury now, and not only the duplicates, which will make it less frustrating but stronger. The power of the project is toned down: instead of giving 50 Culture/Tourism per luxury, it gives 10% of the Production cost. At 0% tech, it is a sad 6.5 Culture/Tourism per luxury, and reverts back to 50 Culture/Tourism at 50% tech or civic completed. It also means it gives 97.5 Culture/Tourism per luxury once all tech/civic are discovered! It will make early victory harder, and late victory earlier. The Culture from luxury is made available earlier. You can now enjoy it from the start at +1 Culture (like Gaul's Mines), and get back to +2 with Theatre Square. Since the Château is more flexible, I removed it from the ability. Also, if a Leader Switcheroo game mode is showing up, then it will work better!
Court of Love: I just added +1 Loyalty to Great Work. Sometime, you couldn't keep the city that flipped to you. It would be a better ability tfor England: it could manage Loyalty issue with Great Work more easily.

I don't know what to think about the free Builders ability from Spain and Maya: it is quite powerful, maybe too much? Currently, the Ancestral Hall is depicted already as the best Government Plaza's building, but that does mean that Spain and the Maya could build the Warlord's Throne instead.
Is Gilgamesh new Combat Strength bonus cumulative? If I have 5 Alliances and manage to bring all my Allies against a common foe, does that mean I now enjoy +25 Combat Strength?!

 

[CromulentRomulan]

Sorry, @InsidiousMage, I really do not intend to pick on you, but somehow your statements hit a nerve with me.
This paragraph is just in the same category when doctors and nurses get attacked for twittering because there is a pandemic and they need to focus 24/7. They don't and FXS Devs don't have to either!

Moderator Action: Snip, please take care how you interact with other posters --NZ
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
In case it needs pointing out. this is a category error. InsidiousMage stated that "people have right to be upset if the game isn't working correctly and that devs are working on seemingly pointless things" and he is 100% correct. The dev and design team aren't putting in Easter Eggs and superfluous game modes in their leisure time. No one is expecting them to be on the clock 24/7. Its pretty reasonable to expect frustration when something goes neglected and something pointless emerges instead

 

[iammaxhailme]

reading all of these thoughts, I do kind of feel for the Firaxis people for balancing the game. There are just so many different audiences for Civ:

• multiplayer audience that is conditioned to DOTA-style competitive balance
• modders
• single player audience who have a completely different idea of competitive balance from the multiplayer people
• theme/fluff concerned audience
• people who specifically want 6 to be more like another game (Civ 4 or CK2)

And the intersection of these audiences ofc.

Yep it's definitely a hard job.

As to multiplayer... I did play a few games in civ 5 and 6 with people I know well, but none of us really seemed to have much fun and all our games ended up being dropped halfway through. I don't think civ is really such a great game for multiplayer, and if there have to be compromises made in terms of balance... single player should be prioritized.

 

[The Civs 6]

I didn’t expect too much from the update, and I am surprisingly content from it. It is way bigger than I expect, and Firaxis even dares to add a brand new effect to Tourism. There are so many things I want to try out. Bravo! Except they didn’t make drastic changes to [insert your country’s civilization] by making it extremely powerful and extremely fun to play. Consequently, this update is obviously a total failure with no chance of any redemption!

Joke aside, I might have hoped the team would rethink more civilizations, like many other players here. France was my top contender. They did make the Garde Impériale better (70 Combat Strength!) and the Château is more flexible (same requirement as a Mekewap but not as powerful), but… I want MORE! No! This is not a child whim! I am a grow-up now!
I feel awkwardly ungrateful to say this, but they are a lot of Culture + Gold tile improvements like the Great Wall, the Pairidaeza and maybe the Golf Course to some extent. The Château was the least impressive of the bunch, so more prone to face drastic change. Basically, I imagined something like that:


I don't know what to think about the free Builders ability from Spain and Maya: it is quite powerful, maybe too much? Currently, the Ancestral Hall is depicted already as the best Government Plaza's building, but that does mean that Spain and the Maya could build the Warlord's Throne instead.
Is Gilgamesh new Combat Strength bonus cumulative? If I have 5 Alliances and manage to bring all my Allies against a common foe, does that mean I now enjoy +25 Combat Strength?!

Going with the thematic/fluff perspective, we have gotten a France in the last 2 games that is very culture focused, and on some level that feels like we are getting a little kitty cat when some of us want this big tiger. In other words, I'm not sure how satisfying a Louvre/Paris/chateau based France can be even if you get the tuning right so they are competitive.

 

[The Civs 6]

Yep it's definitely a hard job.

As to multiplayer... I did play a few games in civ 5 and 6 with people I know well, but none of us really seemed to have much fun and all our games ended up being dropped halfway through. I don't think civ is really such a great game for multiplayer, and if there have to be compromises made in terms of balance... single player should be prioritized.

I played Civ 4 multiplayer a fair amount. That game lends itself to that kind of play.

My experience with 5 is the same. Not fun, and surprisingly a large learning curve that leads to skill gaps (which aren't fun in a game where you don't know you lost 3 hours ago).

I can't imagine playing 6 as a multiplayer game. Part of me thinks it would be a super tedious experience (in part because of the load times). But part of me thinks if you just ran with it, the grab bag of stuff could be fun. Plus, I would like to see rivals in the game who are at least semi-competent for once.

 

[Kwami]

Going with the thematic/fluff perspective, we have gotten a France in the last 2 games that is very culture focused, and on some level that feels like we are getting a little kitty cat when some of us want this big tiger. In other words, I'm not sure how satisfying a Louvre/Paris/chateau based France can be even if you get the tuning right so they are competitive.

Civ IV had a pretty culture-focused France, too, with the Salon providing an extra artist and Louis XIV having the culture + wonder bonuses. I guess Napoleon and CdG weren't as culture-focused, though.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Just for fun I started a TSL mediterranean game with as many contradictions as possible

1: England (Victora)
2: England (Eleanor)
3: France (Eleanor)
4: France (Catherine)
5: France (other Catherine)
6: Greece (Gorgo)
7: Greece (Pericles)
8: Greece Macedon: Alexander
9: Constantinople
10: Not Constantinople

Gorgo and Pericles spawn where Athens and Sparta are, so they're different, at least. Both Englands spawning in London and Suleiman and Basil both spawning in the same place is expected. I had kind of hoped French Eleanor would spawn in Normandy, but no, she and the two catherines all spawned on top of each other. Better make sure you don't have Suleiman and Basil in the same leader pool!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm playing a game as Persia and I've hit something I did worry about when I heard about the new units - I've just upgraded my starting Warrior into an Immortal, but I'm about 4 turns away from unlocking it's replacement (the Men-at-Arms). To be fair I have Science of +30 due to the Etemenanki but still I wonder if the windows for units are too short now??

 

[JifMoose]

The dev and design team aren't putting in Easter Eggs and superfluous game modes in their leisure time. No one is expecting them to be on the clock 24/7. Its pretty reasonable to expect frustration when something goes neglected and something pointless emerges instead

Yes, 100% IMHO. As a software developer I know that all features will be prioritized from a pool of limited resources (i.e. time). I wouldn't be surprised if there were estimates and tickets created to implement those Easter Eggs. Indeed, the developers (or project managers, or marketers) likely have a clear idea that Easter Eggs will net them more attention than fixing bugs, and have consciously made this trade off.

I don't expect miracles from the new features or game balance. But existing features are plain broken. I'm glad some people are enjoying the Easter eggs, at least. Unfortunately for me (i) Atlantis or (ii) petting just actively annoy me, and I wish they'd spent that time fixing the actual bugs.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I played Civ 4 multiplayer a fair amount. That game lends itself to that kind of play.

My experience with 5 is the same. Not fun, and surprisingly a large learning curve that leads to skill gaps (which aren't fun in a game where you don't know you lost 3 hours ago).

I can't imagine playing 6 as a multiplayer game. Part of me thinks it would be a super tedious experience (in part because of the load times). But part of me thinks if you just ran with it, the grab bag of stuff could be fun. Plus, I would like to see rivals in the game who are at least semi-competent for once.

As someone who loves multiplayer, I 100% think that the game should be balanced around singleplayer, because to achieve perfect balance in a game with so many moving parts is impossible, so modding is always gonna be required for non-casual multiplayer anyway. However, I think multiplayer components do expose a few problems that singleplayer alone cannot. I think the major difference between multi and singleplayer is in multiplayer, your opponents have a (semi) functioning brain, they know what your civ does, what you want to do so they will play around your game and try to deny you what you want, which makes it a bit more fun

 

[CromulentRomulan]

@slavaskii: The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and so on. The developers to read our posts here, but I'm sure that interacting with them directly is more effective. Besides, the community here isn't representative of the overall community, either. So, I'm not sure that our threads are any more valid that what the streamers want.

As for those four specific things:
...
We all have our favorites, so I guess some of us are happier with the patch than others, but let's not pretend that the community was ignored, or that Potato and TGM ruined the game, or that this update wasn't quite substantial. Because frankly, none of that is true. Not even kind of.

Truncating this quote. I agree that Grand Embassy is fine as it is. I don't think that either the Korea change or the Australia change are justified as being enumerated as a balance change. I have no strong feelings on the NL change.

I'm quoting because you are misrepresenting the criticisms levelled. Or strawmanning the criticisms being raised in this thread, I'm not sure. I don't think anyone asserted that Potato or TGM ruined the game. A valid point was raised that liaison with them, seeking their consultation or advice, wouldn't be sufficient or representative.
I think something which was implicit is that Firaxis (Carl specifically) are praised for being present in the chats of streamers. I've seen this point raised at other points on the board and I agree with it that this is actually a negative. Clarifications about the game surface in the lossy media that is a livestream chat. Someone else posted that BBG were consulted as research for this update which makes me despair given the way they balance the game.

Regarding your final point, and I wrote a message about this earlier in the thread, I think that people are aggrieved because they were lead to believe this update would be more substantial than it was. And I think every person in this thread who is turning that back on anyone who mentions it with "sir it was your expectations that were faulty" is exhibiting extremely selective memory. The thread history on this forum is testament enough to how much hype was stirred up.
Firaxis had opportunities to be really clear about what they were delivering. Instead they hyped it up (recalling the tweet that went out about RE the word count of the patch notes). And I don't know why Firaxis chose to do that.

I'm really happy that Mapuche and Spain got some attention. I look forward to new Khmer, though I think they and Inca were in OK spots as they were.

What leaves a bad taste is that every bit of rationale that Carl detailed as preface to the rework reveals in the earlier April video could be extended to other Civs. I think this goes beyond "everyone having their favourites". It seems that there is no consistency as to who received a rework and who got a minor buff.

Everyone in this thread who is trying to dismiss criticisms as complaining, you are doing the game you fanatically adore absolutely no favors.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Firaxis had opportunities to be really clear about what they were delivering. Instead they hyped it up (recalling the tweet that went out about RE the word count of the patch notes). And I don't know why Firaxis chose to do that.

Perhaps because it was true and they delivered more than they promised??!!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I think something which was implicit is that Firaxis (Carl specifically) are praised for being present in the chats of streamers. I've seen this point raised at other points on the board and I agree with it that this is actually a negative. Clarifications about the game surface in the lossy media that is a livestream chat. Someone else posted that BBG were consulted as research for this update which makes me despair given the way they balance the game.

Carl (and others) did loads of research and that is to be commended, I think the result is pretty good and balanced and reflects people working on this update had their fingers on the pulse of the community. Not every suggestion by Potato, TGM or BBG made it in - it was all taken into the mix and considered along with their own experiences and the telemetry. Carl was clear yesterday that although the input was invaluable they have to balance the game at the mid levels not for people streaming on Deity.

 

[Hans Castorp]

Just for fun I started a TSL mediterranean game with as many contradictions as possible


Gorgo and Pericles spawn where Athens and Sparta are, so they're different, at least. Both Englands spawning in London and Suleiman and Basil both spawning in the same place is expected. I had kind of hoped French Eleanor would spawn in Normandy, but no, she and the two catherines all spawned on top of each other. Better make sure you don't have Suleiman and Basil in the same leader pool!

Surely Eleanor should spawn in Bordeaux rather than Normandy?

 

[CromulentRomulan]

Perhaps because it was true and they delivered more than they promised??!!

If they had actually done so the level of criticism would be substantially less

 

[CromulentRomulan]

Carl (and others) did loads of research and that is to be commended, I think the result is pretty good and balanced and reflects people working on this update had their fingers on the pulse of the community. Not every suggestion by Potato, TGM or BBG made it in - it was all taken into the mix and considered along with their own experiences and the telemetry. Carl was clear yesterday that although the input was invaluable they have to balance the game at the mid levels not for people streaming on Deity.

Hey - what information are you privy to that the rest of us are not? Is there a google doc or something with suggestions?

 

[iammaxhailme]

Surely Eleanor should spawn in Bordeaux rather than Normandy?

Yeah probably. I have no idea where Aquitane is lol. I was thinking Normandy because of her son Richard.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Hey - what information are you privy to that the rest of us are not? Is there a google doc or something with suggestions?

Nope I have no inside information, just lots of time to read what is posted watch the updates and catch the twitch streams!

 

[TyrannusRex]

"Updated England and France Eleanor names to be consistent with other dual-civilization leaders."


Eleanor of Aquitaine (England) of the English Empire has declared war on Kublai Khan (China) of the Chinese Empire.
Yes. Because I didn't realize that Eleanor of the English Empire was the leader of ENGLAND.

Guess that's two more leaders I'm never putting in my games again.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Surely Eleanor should spawn in Bordeaux rather than Normandy?

I believe her court was actually in Crecy.


Is anyone else having issue with barb camp notifications firing every turn in an area of the map with no visible camps?