August 2020 Update - Patch Notes Discussion

Laurana Kanan

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Included in this update is the new Natural Wonder picker, which lets you customize the Natural Wonders that will (or won’t) show up in your game, and the Tech and Civics Shuffle mode, a new way of playing that randomizes your path forward on the Tech and Civics trees. Read on for the full list of what’s in today’s free game update.

[NEW FEATURES]

Tech and Civic Shuffle Mode

This new game mode adds variety to the tech tree, as it shuffles techs and civics within their historical eras, leading to different costs and prerequisites than normal. The resulting trees are the same for all players. Techs and civics are also hidden until a prerequisite is earned, preserving the mystery of discovery all the way until the end of the game.

Natural Wonder Picker

Sick of the Bermuda Triangle? Want to break the Delicate Arch? In Advanced Setup, you can now bring up a new menu to choose which Natural Wonders you would like to include in your next game. Wonders checked are not guaranteed to be in your next game, rather, they are part of the pool of Wonders that will then be randomly selected and placed.

[GAME UPDATES]

Items in the list below apply to the Gathering Storm ruleset only.

[BALANCE/POLISH]

Amenities

  • Removed the free population amenity.
  • Added an amenity to the palace.
  • Increased the Golf Course amenities by 1.
  • Decreased all negative amenity level thresholds by 1. Increase Happy and Ecstatic’s minimum by 2.
o New city thresholds:

  • Ecstatic at 5+
  • Happy at 3 to 4
  • Content at -1 to 2
  • Displeased at -3 to -2
  • Unhappy at -5 to -4
  • Unrest at -7 to -6
  • Revolt at -8
o Negative amenities non-food yield decrease changes:

  • Displeased -10%, was -5%
  • Unhappy -20%, was -10%
  • Unrest -30% (stays the same)
  • Revolt -40%, was -60%


  • The Theater Square now gains a major adjacency bonus with the Entertainment complex and Water Park.
Government Plaza Buildings

  • Grand Master’s Chapel provides +5 faith.
  • +3 Diplomatic Favor from the Foreign Ministry.


  • The Naturalist unit now initially costs 600 Faith and will increase by 100 Faith after each purchase.
  • Fixed issues that prevented Apostles from receiving all available promotions.
  • The Appeal stat has been added to the trait section of the Districts, Terrains, Improvements, and Features Civilopedia pages.
  • The text for the Acropolis district now correctly shows major adjacency bonuses for adjacent Wonders.
Apocalypse Game Mode

  • Reduced volcanic activity.
  • Reduced frequency of Aid Requests.
  • Added CO2 production to Soothsayer actions (50 for causing a disaster, 30 for sacrificing a unit).
Forest/Jungle Fires now remain in the burnt state longer.

[AI]

  • Added some bias towards getting governments with lots of wild card slots.
  • Fixed an issue where the AI was overvaluing bonuses from governments for cities with governors.
  • Increased desire for civics that unlock new governments. Capped desire for Theology for high Faith income civs (ensures they can move on to tier 3 or 4 governments).
  • Various AI improvements.
[UI]

  • Governors assigned to a City-State are now displayed in the City-States panel.
  • Fixed an issue that caused map selection to break.
  • Various UI bug fixes and polish.
[MISC]

  • Fixing balanced start positions choosing invalid placements.
  • Added bias for starting in the center of a continent the player does not share with other majors.
[CRASH]

  • Fix crash when forming a Corps and the unit that is joining is not on the map.
  • Additional crash fixes.
 
I like that content is a much wider threshold, that makes sense to me. And the smaller unhappy states being more punishing is really interesting!
 
It seems that the best strategy now is to just keep all your cities at -1 or 0 amenities, and ignore the bonuses that happy or ecstatic can give. Also, when will the patch be released?
 
Wait, so after removing the free amenity for every city, they went back and reduced all the penalty thresholds?!? Doesn't that put things back exactly where they were, except with a less intuitive presentation?

I thought that was the best change in the patch, but now they've completely neutralized it, while also negating any pre-existing mods that did the same thing.
 
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In general (personally), looking forward to play with the new amenity changes, glad they revisit the Apocalypse gamemode, disappointed with the limited changes to Gov. Plaza - still no changes to Audience Chamber.

And sincerely wish more tweaks related to amenity bonuses can be applied in the future, the current Ecstatic bonus is not that on par with its high threshold. If they really want to tweak amenity they shouldn't stop here.
 

Grand Master’s Chapel provides +5 faith
+3 Diplomatic Favor from the Foreign Ministry.

Glad to see these buildings getting buffed, becuase I probably built the spying one in 99% of my games. Probably still will, tbh.
 
Wait, so after removing the free amenity for every city, they went back and reduced all the penalty thresholds?!? Doesn't that put things back exactly where they were, except with a less intuitive presentation?
Looks like they did :\

So is there any difference between having 0 amenity before this update and -1 amenity since this update?
 
Oh wow, that is a major amenities pass. Really looking forward to giving it a go!

Also like that after making a thread on theatre square agencies they've buffed it :cool:

I know some people are complaining about the vagueness of the AI changes, but I wonder if that's to keep a bit of mystery and avoid being able to break the game before the patch is even out.
 
BTW my steam isn't updating the game, do you guys already have the patch?

NVM- just had to be patient:lol:
 
Seems not. Ironically theis may have made amenities less important, because ther's no benefit to going to +1 or +2. Get just enough amenities to stay at content, and then forget about them.
I dunno, I like buffing all my yields by 10% whenever possible.
 
Patch downloaded. Time to fire this up and see what's cooking...
 
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