Australian Summer Patch discussion thread

[gettingfat]

Just playing my first game after the patch.
So barbarians are even stronger than before and some people are HAPPY about that? Seriously?
In round 4 my capital was surrounded by barbarian riders. They do not attack the city in every round, but any unit that leaves the city is killed instantly.
That means building units is the only sensible thing to do for many many rounds. How can anyone find this good?
In my future games I will turn off barbarians completely. They were already overpowered before the patch, now it's just insane.

edit: ...and I am only playing on level "king".

I fully agree with you the barb setting is quite ridiculous especially after this patch. I only tried one emperor and one immortal game to test. In my emperor game my warrior was attacked by a horseman and a scout (barb scouts also attack now) at turn 7. Give me a break it's only turn 7!

Some posters here will always tell you it's the player's fault for not building enough units and not killing the barb scouts. The problem is it just forces all players to play the early game with the same style. Even then it's still a matter of pure RNG god. No strategy can stop a horseman plus a scout at turn 7. Is it "fun"? To me it's just like playing football in a muddy field in a thunderstorm. Somebody will call it fun and tell you this tests your perseverance. To me this no longer tests your football skills but your luck and patience instead, and is not that fun.

 

[Ferocitus]

I fully agree with you the barb setting is quite ridiculous especially after this patch. I only tried one emperor and one immortal game to test. In my emperor game my warrior was attacked by a horseman and a scout (barb scouts also attack now) at turn 7. Give me a break it's only turn 7!

Some posters here will always tell you it's the player's fault for not building enough units and not killing the barb scouts. The problem is it just forces all players to play the early game with the same style. Even then it's still a matter of pure RNG god. No strategy can stop a horseman plus a scout at turn 7. Is it "fun"? To me it's just like playing football in a muddy field in a thunderstorm. Somebody will call it fun and tell you this tests your perseverance. To me this no longer tests your football skills but your luck and patience instead, and is not that fun.

Try a lower level if you can't handle the heat

 

[Chibisuke]

Barb scouts shouldnt be able to alert within a couple turns of spawning. That does make it too much RNG because that's how your getting them that early. Camp spawns right next to your start city, scout appears next to your border and immediately alerts. It's dumb and should be fixed since that's not the point of that mechanism.

 

[ThERat]

The real problem is that the maps are far too small. Thanks to that, barbarians are a real pest. I wish there would be a slider setting for barbs instead of the black and white barbs Yes or No. C'mon, this is the Civ 6 and you can't even give us the option of different barbarian levels?

 

[Chibisuke]

Yea I remember Civ 5 at least had the option for "raging barbarians" which dratically increased the number and aggressiveness of barbs.

 

[nzcamel]

You might try being more aggressive towards nearby barbarian huts. Nearby = within 15 hexes or so of any of your cities. If the hut is a lot closer to another major civ, you might be able to get away with ignoring it until you settle something closer. If you leave nearby huts alone, eventually they will probably try to overrun your cities. Go after them as soon as you seem them pop. I've been known to completely restart a game if my starting warrior is moved off in the wrong direction and a scout appears at my border. That is one of the most vulnerable periods and if left unchecked you will have a lot of barbarians knocking at your door.

On the plus side, with the new research requirements for horseback riding it seems that the barbarians are not immediately fielding horsemen like they used to. I am seeing a wave of warriors and slingers first. That's new.

Agreed except for the restarting bit

Keep your first warrior close to home defending your fledgling Civ and give them some early friends. It'll make all the difference.

 

[gettingfat]

Try a lower level if you can't handle the heat

It's not I can't handle. It's not fun because it's out of the player's control. Also facing AI civs below emperor are like an adult fighting 8 year old kids most of the time. The barbs just make the field muddy and slippery so the kids have a bit of chance. It's still not fun. If the devs can make the combat AI more like an AI so the battles become truly challenging, then I will gladly lower my level.

The AI civs actually can't handle the aggressive barbs more so than the human player. I successfully finished off Australian. 2 of their 4 cities have been pillaged including the holy sites, and I caught a barb settler which likely was from the Aussie. The game does not get more difficult with the aggressive barbs after patched, it basically gets more chaotic instead.

 

[rschissler]

It's not I can't handle. It's not fun because it's out of the player's control. Also facing AI civs below emperor are like an adult fighting 8 year old kids most of the time. The barbs just make the field muddy and slippery so the kids have a bit of chance. It's still not fun. If the devs can make the combat AI more like an AI so the battles become truly challenging, then I will gladly lower my level.

The AI civs actually can't handle the aggressive barbs more so than the human player. I successfully finished off Australian. 2 of their 4 cities have been pillaged including the holy sites, and I caught a barb settler which likely was from the Aussie. The game does not get more difficult with the aggressive barbs after patched, it basically gets more chaotic instead.

With that note, I'll keep barbarians turned off in my games...

 

[ThERat]

As gettingfat stated, this is my experience too. And the AI still doesn't know how to defend itself, building settlers and builders while being under siege.

 

[Furycrab]

Not sure why people are going nuts over the barbarians? Are people building monuments first and then having their initial Warrior peace out? My initial game I think I noticed that the barbs seem to spawn a turn or two later than usual, and the fact that the scout goes on a rampage if it's camp dies means that you don't have this old weird scenario where a scout got to see your cities, but before it ran back someone kills the camp so the scout goes all buggy and triggers the next closest camp, or worst instantly triggers a new camp that just spawned. If anything, I haven't seen any buggy behavior, like a Camp that starts to spawn set after set of barbs without any scout in the immediate area.

I did however notice that Australia has a Pasture resource bias (and coastal), so most games he starts right next to a Horse resource, and if you don't cover or kill any camp that spawns in a 6 tile area, you'll likely be in trouble. Learn how to handle Barbs, it's not rocket science, and they actually help your early game once you know how to handle them by giving you gold and various Eurekas.

 

[nzcamel]

It's not I can't handle. It's not fun because it's out of the player's control.

Civilization VI does more to take optimized choices being forced on the player out of the game than any iteration before it. Between builds and techs in previous games you didn't have genuine choices much of the time as there was always either the no brainer option and/or the optimal option. It has worked so well, that while I wouldn't mind having it back, I don't miss the build queue as I am in the moment for most of the game.

With that in mind....you are telling me that self preservation and a lack of choices in the bronze age bothers you!? Having a build queue dominated with warriors and slingers very early in the game is a heavy? Really? Compared to a duller game where we all come up with an exact path through the tech tree that can be 90% repeated in most games?

 

[Morgawr]

I agree that the game does a beautiful job with early barbarians. It's very well designed. Each scenario has it pros and cons - if you start near barb camps then forces to build up early military. With trained archers and warriors then I find myself in those games in good position to take an aggressive stance against my neighbors to make use of my early army.

On the other hand if you are cushioned by city states and no real barb threat early on, you go ahead and build wonders and expand but are more vulnerable militarily. I feel like this is very true to real history too; civs had to adopt to their surroundings. Besides, "barbarian " tribes played a huge role in the ancient world- Rome was sacked multiple times etc

Finally, remember this is a game and you are not supposed to win every single game. It is perfectly OK if you lose x% of your games due to being overrun by barbarians. (I surely do) Just start a new game - it's not like you spent more than 50 turns on it anyway

 

[Gengsikan]

The patch is a mess... I start a game as Jadwiga. Pericles just spamed settlers to settle 1 tile from my capital. I conquered 2 of his cities and he don't stopped spam settlers. All AIs I meet denounced me for conquer his cities (WTH I just repel Pericles????).

 

[bladex]

you can edit the distance at what AI will 1st appear in from your 1st city

edit \GlobalParameters

look for these lines (these are values i have set)

<Row Name="START_DISTANCE_MAJOR_CIVILIZATION" Value="16" />
<Row Name="START_DISTANCE_MINOR_CIVILIZATION" Value="9" />

major are AI
minor are CS

don't set it too high though otherwise depending how many AI you play with they won't spawn at all on smaller maps.

 

[Furycrab]

I agree that the game does a beautiful job with early barbarians. It's very well designed. Each scenario has it pros and cons - if you start near barb camps then forces to build up early military. With trained archers and warriors then I find myself in those games in good position to take an aggressive stance against my neighbors to make use of my early army.

On the other hand if you are cushioned by city states and no real barb threat early on, you go ahead and build wonders and expand but are more vulnerable militarily. I feel like this is very true to real history too; civs had to adopt to their surroundings. Besides, "barbarian " tribes played a huge role in the ancient world- Rome was sacked multiple times etc

Finally, remember this is a game and you are not supposed to win every single game. It is perfectly OK if you lose x% of your games due to being overrun by barbarians. (I surely do) Just start a new game - it's not like you spent more than 50 turns on it anyway

There's a certain understanding of the barbs you need that I'm not 100% sure the game teaches very well. It got a little better with the addition of the marker over scouts that tell you it's running back to get friends, but there are still some things it doesn't tell you at all. For example it doesn't surprise me that with a Civ that has a Pasture bias that people are struggling more because it means most games they start next to a horse and finding Strategic resources, especially horses in the early game has serious implications for what you should be doing with your units. If the game had some indication that a barb camp has access to Iron or Horses it would probably help newer players understand what is going on a lot faster. I also would like that damn sound effect of a new barb camp spawning to have an indicator on the right. It's dumb that I need to listen to game sound for an important reminder.

My impression so far though have been that the barbs are about the same, if not cleaner because scouts don't linger and basically suicide if you kill the main camp.

A few things I noticed... If an AI denounces you, they no longer have this huge additional negative modifier on the trade screen. They still seem to hate you from their posture, but they no longer offer you complete bullfeathers deals. They also aggressively trade and pay well to get copies of strategics (I'm assuming it's so they have an easier time upgrading). The tech tree change seems to have them making archers more often, haven't seen them really in action yet though.

 

[Victoria]

A couple of small things I have noticed

Meeting and swapping delegations seems not to show capital... Or was that already there?
I will have a barb both sides of a city and sometimes the city still heals. It seems it is when there is a sea tile (even though they have no boats or units). I remember a discussion thread on this where it said historically coastal cities would get supplies from sea unless blockaded. So this is a change that is worthy of mention

 

[Halcyan2]

Has anyone tested to see if Australia's production bonus (10 turns if target of war, 20 turns after liberating) scales based on Game Speed? 10/20 turns isn't much on Marathon but is quite significant on Online or Quick.

 

[Tacgnol]

So I cleared a camp with a warrior, and the next turn the Scout attacked and killed my warrior.

That's the most I've done lol. Not sure if this is an actual change but I've never seen a Scout attack before, just pillage trade routes

 

[Victoria]

Not sure if this is an actual change

This is definitely a change. Not only do barb scouts (often) go suicidal on camp destruction but AI Civ scouts are much more aggressive in battles.

They also aggressively trade and pay well to get copies of strategics

Yes this is an interesting one I have had crazy sums of money offered for iron or horses. This is welcome and makes sense. It is another great strategic choice if you think about it. You can feed your horses/iron/niter to the civ behind an aggressive next door civ in the hope they will be in a better state. It also proves the AI is actively upgrading units. Naturally you need to be aware you may have to take that civ at a later time ... and think very carefully before trading uranium.

On a side note, the AI has always loved your luxuries and always gone for them but giving them to a next door neighbour you are considering attacking may be detrimental. As I suspect they suffer often from war weariness now (or always?) I always am looking for a civ short on luxuries to have a DOW on and a long war for them to suffer. I also suspect this may be a strategy behind why civ's declare on you but do not attack, just to keep your weariness up.

 

[nzcamel]

There's a certain understanding of the barbs you need that I'm not 100% sure the game teaches very well. It got a little better with the addition of the marker over scouts that tell you it's running back to get friends, but there are still some things it doesn't tell you at all. For example it doesn't surprise me that with a Civ that has a Pasture bias that people are struggling more because it means most games they start next to a horse and finding Strategic resources, especially horses in the early game has serious implications for what you should be doing with your units. If the game had some indication that a barb camp has access to Iron or Horses it would probably help newer players understand what is going on a lot faster. I also would like that damn sound effect of a new barb camp spawning to have an indicator on the right. It's dumb that I need to listen to game sound for an important reminder.

They did tell us in all the early videos that barbs near horses will spawn horse units; and the civilopedia says as much.