August 2020 Update - Patch Notes Discussion

[Lord Lakely]

Amenities are much harsher. Observe this:

Dumfries has the highest amount of Amenities out of any of my cities at +3. Two of those are from a nearby Golf Course, there's also a Colosseum providing +2 and a Temple of Artemis providing an additional +3.

So, for a generic civ this city would've gotten a +1 in Amenities. If I had missed both of those wonders the city would have been downright unhappy, at -4 Amenities.

Looks... pretty harsh to me if you don't have a built-in Amenity bonus. Cultural Heritage has become one of the most important Civics in the game.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Dumfries has the highest amount of Amenities out of any of my cities at +3. Two of those are from a nearby Golf Course, there's also a Colosseum providing +2 and a Temple of Artemis providing an additional +3.
So, for a generic civ this city would've gotten a +1 in Amenities. If I had missed both of those wonders the city would have been downright unhappy, at -4 Amenities.
Looks... pretty harsh to me if you don't have a built-in Amenity bonus. Cultural Heritage has become one of the most important Civics in the game.

Looks like it's very hard to reach +5 for Ecstatic bonuses, at least not before mid-to-late game, or not without heavy luxury buying.

And I am not sure if +10% yields for working hard on amenities (+5) is an adequate reward or not.

 

[Lord Lakely]

For Scotland the bonus is +15%, plus 1 extra Scientist and Engineer point if you have the districts. It's definitely worth it for them.

For the others.... I think it's better to just avoid the harsh penalties and only kick into overdrive once you hit Cultural Heritage for EC/WP stacking. Brazil I dont see getting mileage out of Amenities, but the EC adjustments is an extra adjacency bonus for their theatre squares. A Brazillian Theatre Square adjacent to an EC, the Colosseum and 2 jungle tiles gets +5 Culture O__O. I'll play Brazil next to check my pet theory but pushing CV as Brazil should be pretty strong now. (conversely, it makes their religion worse because Holy Sites are now harder to fit into their cities).

 

[acluewithout]

Good changes in this Patch. Very excited about Amenity changes.

I’ve been poking around on reddit, twitter, streams etc. My impression is FXS will see the following gripes all over.

• Stronger downside to negative amenities are good, but needed to be more upside for Ecstatic Cities. Either bigger bonuses for Ecstatic or another level above Ecstatic.

• Changes to Grandmaster Chapel and Foreign Ministry are fine, but Audience Chamber needed a buff too.

• Natural Wonder picker is great, but also need the ability to pick City States and exclude specific Civs.

Just caught GameMechanics stream, and he just went on a (quite polite) tear about the lack of a buff to the positive end of happiness.

Anyway. Really does seem like a good Patch to me. Keen to see how the amenity changes shake out. Mid game settles might be tricky, particularly with Hic Sunt Draconis. Looking forward to using England’s +7 Amenity powered Stadiums. Really hoping that plus envoy changes improves game pacing / overall challenge.

Honestly, losing that free amenity just feels “right”. I don’t know about others, but I’m feeling a lot more positive about Civ 6. Really looking forward to September now.

[BTW, for anyone that follows TheGameMechanic. He seems to be having some quite serious health issues at the moment. If people are concerned, they might want to sub him given things like medical costs in the US. He seems like a good guy and I really hope he’s okay.]

 

[JesseS]

Brazil I dont see getting mileage out of Amenities, but the EC adjustments is an extra adjacency bonus for their theatre squares. A Brazillian Theatre Square adjacent to an EC, the Colosseum and 2 jungle tiles gets +5 Culture

+6 culture for Brazil actually. +7 if you put another district next to the theater square.

Also, any civ can now get 2 +5 and 2 +3 theater squares by clustering them next to an EC and Colosseum.

 

[hhhhhh]

So since we are talking about amenity, if I keep all my cities at -1 amenity (content, no penalty), is it just easier amenity management? Somehow I sense one can going wider if they are happy with amenity being at -1 (making amenity go from -1 to +3 is just too costly for that 5%).

Before the change if I choose to settle 25 cities at 10 population, the total amenity I need is 25 * 4 - 1 = 99 (1 is free from Palace). Now it's 25 * 4 - 2 = 98 (2 are free from Palace) if I'm fine with keeping all cities at -1 amenity. To make them happy would take 25 extra before, so it wasn't hard. But it will take 100 extra now.

And happy cities still only get 5%? Ecstatic only get 10%? That's way too little.

 

[nzcamel]

Amenities are much harsher.

Yep. It's fantastic! I normally have no problems getting happy and ecstatic cities. I don't think I've seen one today! (Note - playing marathon, so yet to hit later game). It hasn't helped that the AI so far have only had one copy of any given luxury thus far (finally got a trade in the last few turns); but regardless, it's still waaaay better.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Yay, I'm getting Meteor showers and Forest fires without the Apocalypse mod enabled!

So, I ran a couple tests and this is still broken. Double-checking the modinfo for GC/Maya, and it was not updated so you must have applied the fix here.
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I'm also curious what people are finding in relation to this: "Forest/Jungle Fires now remain in the burnt state longer"? I'm finding that my fires last 2 turns and then stay burnt for 4 turns. Then on the 7th turn I get the regrown notification. That seems to be the same from before the update iirc. Just looking at the changes in the file, it should last 2 turns longer than this.

 

[bbbt]

A. ) 1 Free Amenity per city (unchanged)
Negative Thresholds at -1, -3, -5, -7 (unchanged)
Positive Thresholds at +4 and +6

B.) No Free Amenity
Negative Thresholds at -2, -4, -6, -8
Positive Thresholds at +3 and +5

These two options are functionally identical. A city with the same number of added amenities will always be at the same happiness level under either system. Any change to happiness effects will apply equally to either system. The only difference is that Option B unnecessarily changes both happiness thresholds and free amenities, in opposing directions, to arrive at exactly the same result as Option A. This creates confusion, breaks mods, and results in a less intuitive starting point for negative modifiers.

As I posted above you, they are NOT functional identical when looked at a from an empire perspective.

Previously you needed MORE amenities for the exact same population densely settled - i.e. 4 cities of 10 citizens required 6 more amenities than 10 cities of 4 citizens for the same effect, because the latter empire was getting more free amenities from the cities.

It's NOT a happiness rebalance - it's s a tall versus wide rebalance that they attempted to do without rebalancing happiness.

 

[reddishrecue]

It only happens once you get to max climate change. You will now get frequent comets

As long as it doesn't have anything with the anger of the gods. I don't really use the soothsayer.

 

[Amrunril]

As I posted above you, they are NOT functional identical when looked at a from an empire perspective.

Previously you needed MORE amenities for the exact same population densely settled - i.e. 4 cities of 10 citizens required 6 more amenities than 10 cities of 4 citizens for the same effect, because the latter empire was getting more free amenities from the cities.

It's NOT a happiness rebalance - it's s a tall versus wide rebalance that they attempted to do without rebalancing happiness.

If the free amenity was removed without changing the thresholds, then it would be a tall vs. wide rebalance. As is, though, noting has actually changed with regard to avoiding penalties. The 4 cities with 10 citizens will have 4 fewer free amenities but will need 4 fewer to remain content. The 10 cities with 4 citizens will have 10 fewer free amenities but will need 10 fewer to remain content.

 

[DeckerdJames]

Here's a table breaking down the changes by each amenity level. Effectively, amenities are shifted down by 1 threshold with no free amenity for the first 2 population. I have shifted the table to create an easy comparison accounting for this change alongside the other changes to amenity yields. Positive amenities are less worthwhile and harder to get bonuses from, but negative amenities in the range of -2 to -5 (equivalent to the prior -1 to -4) are more punishing.

View attachment 567473



These changes are a good tweak and should address many of my complaints around AI policy and government choices. Hopefully we will see less civil prestige and fascism and more democracy and rationalism.

The government plaza building changes are disappointing. Grandmaster's Chapel was already good and +5 faith is a pretty minor bonus by the time it's available. +3 diplo favor from the Foreign Ministry isn't bad (equivalent to +18-39 gpt depending on how much AIs value it) but it's pretty bland. I would rather see something like Hungary's ability added, like gain 1 envoy when levying. And it's surprising to see Audience Chamber go without a modest buff.

The total number of steps from lowest to highest amenity value is the same. Previously it was -7 to 6. Now it is -8 to 5. In the new system, there are more steps on the negative side than the positive side.

In the old system, the neutral point between penalty or bonus yields only existed at step 0. The neutral point has been expanded and now encompasses 4 steps, -1 to 2. Besides the capital city, cities innately start at step -1 meaning they lean toward unhappiness.

In the new system, bonus yields are granted on only the top 3 steps with the top bonus on only step 5. The bottom 7 steps, -2 to -8, award penalties to yields but are now more linear increasing by -10% until it is at a maximum of -40%.

As another player said, without free amenities, taller empires are not penalized for having fewer cities.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Nerfed: Water Parks, Entertainment Complex, Digital Democracy, New Deal, Colosseum etc. -- They can bring your amenity to +1 or +3, however the effect of +1/+3 are all nerfed. (Actually the previous ecstatic is only +2 content in the new version)
Building a full-price district only to provide +2 adj for another district is nonsense, so better not building them at all. However, brazilian carnivals & culture zones may be worthwhile. (Just like the Roman industrial zones)

Bonus: Garrison +1 amenity policy/ Classical Republic, etc. small amenity adjustment cards
They can be used to prevent you from negative amenities, whose punishments are doubled.

Basically the new amenity system encourages you to maintain at -1 amenity in every city. Having more amenity makes little sense, while falling below -1 yields serious disadvantages.

This also severely discourage you from growing from 10 to 11. If you're already at -1 amenity for 10 pop, the 11th pop is totally negative now.

Naturalists' prices reduced to half. This is a good change . Naturalists are useful now. A nerf to mounties as they're no longer cheaper than naturalists and therefore becomes totally useless.

 

[Datgingah]

Petition to make new Happiness level called 'We love the king day' as an homage to older civ games!

 

[Laurana Kanan]

I'm also curious what people are finding in relation to this: "Forest/Jungle Fires now remain in the burnt state longer"? I'm finding that my fires last 2 turns and then stay burnt for 4 turns. Then on the 7th turn I get the regrown notification. That seems to be the same from before the update iirc. Just looking at the changes in the file, it should last 2 turns longer than this.

It is a bug. Two turn values were left unchanged in the "GranColombia_Maya_Expansion2" file.

 

[comatosedragon]

I'm not sure I see the point of removing the free Amenity for each city if the minimum Happiness thresholds are also reduced by one.

The only thing I could think of was now that 'Free Amenity for each city' can become a Unique Ability for one of the new civs? IDK.

 

[bonfireg]

Has anybody else had an issue with the Catherine de Medici persona pack disappearing? I updated the game and now I can't load any of my saved games which were started with this persona pack enabled. I have the DLC installed but it's not showing up in my list of mods.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Taking the free amenity away was something I wished for a long time, so I'm glad to see that it has become real

For the moved tresholds, I will wait with my judgement until having played some games. At least for the moment I trust Firaxis that they had their thoughs behind this change.

The only odd thing I agree on is -1 being still content. Even if that should play out nicely balancewise, it is problematic in regard to intuitive gameplay - you have gotten used to 0 being the crucial turning-point and it just feels natural, as most stuff in the world we live in is centered around it. I would desire either another change restoring 0 as treshold or, if that is not possible or desired, and -1 should stay I would emphasize a solution some one else has posted before: Turn the red amenity warning into yellow, when you are at -1.

 

[hhhhhh]

As I posted above you, they are NOT functional identical when looked at a from an empire perspective.

Previously you needed MORE amenities for the exact same population densely settled - i.e. 4 cities of 10 citizens required 6 more amenities than 10 cities of 4 citizens for the same effect, because the latter empire was getting more free amenities from the cities.

It's NOT a happiness rebalance - it's s a tall versus wide rebalance that they attempted to do without rebalancing happiness.

I like this way of thinking, but making cities "content" at -1 amenity really throw things off. If you are satisfied with making cities stay "content" then you will need 4 * 4 = 16 amenity for 4 cities of 10 citizens, and you only need 1 * 10 = 10 amenity for 10 cities of 4 citizens. It's even worse when you take Palace into account.

If cities are content at 0 amenity then you need 20 for both 4 cities of 10 citizens and 10 cities of 4 citizens.

 

[Gedemon]

Does the Natural Wonder picker work for anyone else? For me the option is there but it's inactive, and the tooltip says something that seems unrelated to natural wonders.

View attachment 567484

For those with this issue, try to update YnAMP, SeelingCat released an update for the patch.