[NFP] April Update Video

[IvoryPavane]

There are already plenty of faith heavy domination civs, the game doesn't need another, especially after Basil.

It’s just one option for her though. Georgia can go domination, religion or diplomacy. This is just an upgrade to the domination side, replacing the previous domination flavoured ability with something more useful.

Im not saying it isn’t lazy or there couldn’t have been a more impactful rework, but there is still lemonade to be made from these lemons.

 

[Kwami]

It’s just one option for her though. Georgia can go domination, religion or diplomacy. This is just an upgrade to the domination side, replacing the previous domination flavoured ability with something more useful.

Im not saying it isn’t lazy or there couldn’t have been a more impactful rework, but there is still lemonade to be made from these lemons.

Or Culture, really. All that faith for parks and rock bands and cultists, cheaper walls, more envoys... It's not bad!

 

[Dantesedge]

Or Culture, really. All that faith for parks and rock bands and cultists, cheaper walls, more envoys... It's not bad!

Ha, beat me to it. I was typing this same thing when you responded. +9 Tourism in every City Center from just walls is no joke, and all that Faith for what you were pointing out.

Personally, I think she has a stronger cultural game than a religious game, and either way, it’s a nice fall back plan if you cant secure a religion since you don’t need one. I’ve played games where I don’t bother getting a religion; I just absorb someone else’s to use my Envoys (majority doesn’t mean it has to be yours), and chase Culture.

 

[MrRadar]

Why didn't anyone pay attention to the amount of gold at 2:10? What does it mean? Cheat code or some hint?

New game mode - Hyperinflation

 

[Shadowstrike]

Are both the Men-at-arms and the Line Infantry melee units? The latter seems very likely since it fits between (early modern) Musketmen and (WW1/2-style) Infantry, representing the infantry of the 18th and 19th centuries, but putting men-at-arms between swordsmen and musketmen would mean a lot of upgrades for that one line alone.

I guess overall, I'm a bit confused by the design to keep an anti-cav line going through history, when that role got subsumed into an infantry standard (i.e. "pike and shot" were the real formations that musketmen represent, and then bayonets and later bazookas served in the same anti-cav role). The evolution of the archer-crossbowman chain into field artillery made sense, but it's weird that they then go back to machine guns, when it should really represent non-siege artillery pieces.

 

[InsidiousMage]

This is just an upgrade to the domination side, replacing the previous domination flavoured ability with something more useful.

Georgia didn't have any warmonger abilities before and getting a new one doesn't do them any favors. The Protectorate War ability was great but it at least made Georgia feel cohesive but now they feel all over the place with no synergies. Build walls, kill units for faith, become suzerain of a city state, get a Golden Age and so on. Strong abilities are fine and all but civs and leaders should have a cohesive feel to them and lot of the what are considered the worst civs have that problem. Spain and Mapuche suffered from the same problem before the changes and now Georgia does as well.

 

[IvoryPavane]

Georgia didn't have any warmonger abilities before and getting a new one doesn't do them any favors. The Protectorate War ability was great but it at least made Georgia feel cohesive but now they feel all over the place with no synergies. Build walls, kill units for faith, become suzerain of a city state, get a Golden Age and so on. Strong abilities are fine and all but civs and leaders should have a cohesive feel to them and lot of the what are considered the worst civs have that problem. Spain and Mapuche suffered from the same problem before the changes and now Georgia does as well.

I don’t agree with your assessment. One of the abilities LITERALLY required you to go to war. The new ability does not (either farm barbarians, or it kicks in when you are declared upon.) Imo it’s more flexible ability and at least certainly less clunky.

However, I recognise that my opinion is not fact, just opinion. And I doubt either of us are going to sway the other, so let’s leave it there. My hope is you enjoy it more in practice more than theory

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

I like the Golf Course a lot, getting gold, culture (thereby late-game tourism), and amenities is really nice and synergizing well with Scottish Enlightenment, which as you said is great.

I think the Golf Course is up there with the Kurgan and the Nubian Pyramids as the unholy trinity of terrible improvements, for multiple reasons:
1. 2 Gold per city is a paltry amount at the end of Renaissance. I am not even sure if I want 2 Gold per city in Classical. (Up to) 2 Culture per city, again, is also terrible. The yields are literally just there to make the tile look less empty, but they don't serve any real purpose. And no, these yields don't scale at all. The only thing Golf Course gets from tech/civic advancement is 1 Housing at the end of Information Era, which to me is like a slap to the face to cap off how trivial an improvement can be.
2. The civic requirement of this improvement is so bad. Naturally a civ with 0 religious tendency can ignore the 3 bottom leaf civics, Scotland cannot. They have to spend Culture to unlock not 1, not 2, but all 3 civics to unlock their improvement, and the improvement itself is so underwhelming.
3. After the Amenity threshold change, Happy and Ecstatic thresholds were raised by 2, Golf Course's Amenity went from 1 to 2 (raised by 1), so they somehow managed to make a bottom tier improvement even less efficient than it is.
This improvement literally just gets put down to get the Amenities out, and that is it, which is back to my first comment "Scotland is a terribly designed civ with 1 strong bonus and everything else revolves around it." I don't think anyone cares about the Golf Course's yields.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

I think the Golf Course is up there with the Kurgan and the Nubian Pyramids as the unholy trinity of terrible improvements, for multiple reasons:
1. 2 Gold per city is a paltry amount at the end of Renaissance. I am not even sure if I want 2 Gold per city in Classical. (Up to) 2 Culture per city, again, is also terrible. The yields are literally just there to make the tile look less empty, but they don't serve any real purpose. And no, these yields don't scale at all. The only thing Golf Course gets from tech/civic advancement is 1 Housing at the end of Information Era, which to me is like a slap to the face to cap off how trivial an improvement can be.
2. The civic requirement of this improvement is so bad. Naturally a civ with 0 religious tendency can ignore the 3 bottom leaf civics, Scotland cannot. They have to spend Culture to unlock not 1, not 2, but all 3 civics to unlock their improvement, and the improvement itself is so underwhelming.
3. After the Amenity threshold change, Happy and Ecstatic thresholds were raised by 2, Golf Course's Amenity went from 1 to 2 (raised by 1), so they somehow managed to make a bottom tier improvement even less efficient than it is.
This improvement literally just gets put down to get the Amenities out, and that is it, which is back to my first comment "Scotland is a terribly designed civ with 1 strong bonus and everything else revolves around it." I don't think anyone cares about the Golf Course's yields.

Even when it was first released, I thought the golf course was underpowered. On top of all of that, you can't even build more than one per city, which even more restrictive than kurgans or pyramids. (also, BS that they can't be build on desert tiles...we have plenty of great desert courses where I live. Golf is a universal sport; it doesn't care about terrain.)

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Even when it was first released, I thought the golf course was underpowered. On top of all of that, you can't even build more than one per city, which even more restrictive than kurgans or pyramids. (also, BS that they can't be build on desert tiles...we have plenty of great desert courses where I live. Golf is a universal sport; it doesn't care about terrain.)

Gotta be careful about the volcano ones though.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Gotta be careful about the volcano ones though.

Sid Meier's Civilization: Toadstool Tour

 

[UWHabs]

Even when it was first released, I thought the golf course was underpowered. On top of all of that, you can't even build more than one per city, which even more restrictive than kurgans or pyramids. (also, BS that they can't be build on desert tiles...we have plenty of great desert courses where I live. Golf is a universal sport; it doesn't care about terrain.)

I think initially, I didn't mind it, since at the time there were very few if any improvements that gave amenities. But especially once they came out with Cahokia Mounds, and then you saw the potentially crazy yields that Sweden or Canada can get on their "one per city" UI, yeah, the golf course looks pretty horrible. If a hockey rink can give food and production late, I don't see why the golf course can't be something like:
+1 food, +1 production, +1 culture, +2 gold
+2 amenities
+1 housing
as a base yield, and then potentially getting up to like double those yields over time. Or perhaps you could give it something like +1 gold per appeal (so like a seaside resort), and then also giving you that in tourism too, so that it basically becomes like an earlier version of a non-spammable seaside resort.

 

[darko82]

Besides that, "we made the AI better" doesn't sell products. New content does.

I don't need new content if I can't enjoy the game with broken AI.

Broken AI = Broken game.

Don't buy it.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

I don't need new content if I can't enjoy the game with broken AI.

Broken AI = Broken game.

Don't buy it.

If Civ worked on developing a more robust/fast/fun multiplayer mode, broken AI would hardly matter. I truly think the slower pace is what is keeping Civ back, not the AI.

Look at other "long-form" genres. Turn-based RPGs are all-but dead and have been replaced by MMOs and action RPGs with quicker turn cycles. Casual consumers generally don't have the patience and attention span, and even civ enthusiasts only have enough to play against themselves--add-in the compounding slow-down from other human players and most of us have no patience.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

If Civ worked on developing a more robust/fast/fun multiplayer mode,

please no.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

If Civ worked on developing a more robust/fast/fun multiplayer mode, broken AI would hardly matter.

Multi player improvements are fine but will never be the focus as it's such a small group of people that play it.

I used to play Civ 4 BTS on King difficulty and the AI was a pretty good challenge in that game military/war-tactics-wise.

The Civ4 AI is pretty bad but they could build and move a unit stack which is what made them a threat!

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

@FXS_MisterKevin presents, (drumroll please), Ptssss...... The Trebuchet!!!!

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Multi player improvements are fine but will never be the focus as it's such a small group of people that play it.

That's kind of an argument from consequence, though. Not many people play MP because multiplayer Civ is too unwieldy. If the devs made a version that moved faster and could be finished in around an hour (typical for RTS games), it would likely gain a larger multiplayer following, develop an online community, and have a lot more profit and survivability in the long term.

 

[InsidiousMage]

That's kind of an argument from consequence, though. Not many people play MP because multiplayer Civ is too unwieldy.

Personally, if the only way to play videos game was online with random strangers I would never play a video game again for the rest of life. Multiplayer is fine for games that work well like that, FPS for example, but, personally, single player only please.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Personally, if the only way to play videos game was online with random strangers I would never play a video game again for the rest of life. Multiplayer is fine for games that work well like that, FPS for example, but, personally, single player only please.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be a robust single player mode. We could feasibly have both. I'm just observing a pretty obvious reason why no one plays multiplayer mode, and how it relates to Civ's general stagnation (crappy AI would be a non-issue, multiplayer focus would encourage better endgame design, speeding up the game might streamline a lot of clunky mechanics, etc. Etc.)