Australian Summer Patch discussion thread

[Standup]

Can you move units with the keyboard yet? The notes said something about more keyboard bindings but I like to use the mouse as little as possible. And I'm really hoping there's a big UI fix somewhere down the line.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

True Earth Start with Cleopatra, the computer put me literally right next to Saladin, who insta-settled, of course. That's some great playtesting there, guys.

I had a similar similar situation playing TSL with Germany. I started right next to France and Poland's settler. I made the mistake of moving one turn. They both settled so I was forced to move 7 turns to find a viable spot for my capital. I spammed warriors and a couple slingers and captured both Poland's capital and the French capital in surprise wars. So I think I will be ok. But the devs really should have made the map bigger. It does not make for a good starting location when multiple civs start so close together that they have no breathing room whatsoever.

 

[nzcamel]

Can you move units with the keyboard yet? The notes said something about more keyboard bindings but I like to use the mouse as little as possible. And I'm really hoping there's a big UI fix somewhere down the line.

Nope to numpud for movement

"Added more bindable keys (Toggle Resource Icons, Toggle Tourism Lens, Alert action)."
​

But not Fortify Until Healed - what the hell Firaxis?!

No key for the reports screen either. And no 'wait' command and key

 

[Wingednosering]

Shocking.



I'll be curious to see if they're functional.

Dunno why so many people dislike Victoria. She's incredibly good. You can steamroll better with her than anybody IMO.

I played a huge Island Plates map for the achieves as her and it was a blast. I started with four boats and ended with nearly every city on the map under my control and about 40 units. Barely had to build anything.

Granted, that is partially thanks to the state of the AI.

 

[Snipes]

So I see some good stuff, but not what the game needed: AI diplomacy overhaul and district cost scaling rework. The fact that "place a district without finishing it then come back to it later" (and that other civs building districts increased the cost of yours!) was a thing in the actual release of the game was mind-boggling.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Decent list of stuff in that patch.....so soon after the last one. The one thing I wish they'd hurry up and put in, though, is a BUILD QUEUE. Seriously, it'd make life so much more convenient!!!

 

[MosheLevi]

Decent list of stuff in that patch.....so soon after the last one. The one thing I wish they'd hurry up and put in, though, is a BUILD QUEUE. Seriously, it'd make life so much more convenient!!!

There is a "build Queue" Mod on Steam and it works good.

 

[bladex]

it's the same one in here

 

[sa1vy]

My interactions with the AI so far:
China was my closest neighbor, about 12 tiles away. He just sort of cried as I took his first city with archers. Then he put up walls in his capital (~turn 55), and I took it with archers. Then he put up walls in his third city and rush built the Great Library. Meanwhile Germany is pretty happy with me. Main menu>exit to desktop.
The AI behavior seems worse to me, if anything. Walls seemed to go up later, and he built about 2 units the whole time I was at war with him.
The barbarian camp to the south was much harder to deal with. It took me two archers to just hold the line against them, and I couldn't make any progress without diverting any more resources.

 

[malitano]

Any feedback about the AI?

Is the AI training enough army units to defend itself?

Is the AI's units the latest units or obsolete units?

Does the AI attack with large armies when it declares war? or does it stay passive and doesn't attack?

Is the AI training siege units and using them to conquer cities?

This can anyone confirm this? Not really interested in Australia or some random UI or map details.

 

[Amrunril]

These are all reasonable changes, but they don't do anything to address the game's biggest balance problems. Production is still the "limiting reactant" far too consistently, and the AI's front loaded bonuses still make early game wonder/GP competition next to impossible without actually providing a serious long term challenge. These issues are seriously hurting the game's replayability, and it's getting frustrating to see patches ignore them.

 

[Japper007]

The Earth TSL map is realy unbalanced in terms of starts: Europeans can't even afford to settle on turn 2 due to every available tile on the continent getting claimed by the AI, meanwhile the US gets all of North America by itself. I get that it makes historical sense but at least make the map bigger then! Why is it even a standard size map to begin with!?

I'm also dissapointed by the lack of civ rebalance, Scythia and Sumeria are still crazy OP, to the point that an MP match played with random civs almost by default goes to the one lucky enough to get one of those two. Here's hoping for the next patch, but it's strange to see such a glaring weakness in the game going untouched for several patches now.

The new Australia civ is nice, haven't played around with their UU much yet but their UI is *gasp* actually something you want to build!.

 

[Japper007]

This can anyone confirm this? Not really interested in Australia or some random UI or map details.

No improvement (or at least I didn't notice any) on all counts unfortunately...

 

[sa1vy]

These are all reasonable changes, but they don't do anything to address the game's biggest balance problems. Production is still the "limiting reactant" far too consistently, and the AI's front loaded bonuses still make early game wonder/GP competition next to impossible without actually providing a serious long term challenge. These issues are seriously hurting the game's replayability, and it's getting frustrating to see patches ignore them.

I disagree that production is a balance problem. On higher difficulties, that's the point: you're not supposed to be able to outproduce the AI. At every stage of the game, there are intelligent decisions you must make regarding how you focus your production. Wonders are usually a poor idea in the early game because you would need to focus too narrowly in order to complete them. Mid game, wonders can still take a long time, but with trade routes they are definitely possible. And late game, you have a lot more flexibility, so producing just about anything is possible if that's your focus. The only production topic I would argue was not properly balanced was space ship projects, which were fixed in the previous patch.
Yes, districts can take a ludicrously long time to build later on in the game. However, if they were not, they would be grossly overpowered. You can still work around it to finish it if you want to, but you need to plan and appropriate your resources accordingly, like switching trade routes and using builders to cut trees. This is basically the point of strategy games: deciding what is worth your time now, and how best to accomplish it.
Great people are absolutely possible early game, even on deity. Like anything, you just have to make it a priority. Sometimes you don't even need to do city projects to get them; Divine Spark will often get your there anyway. In my opinion, it's an extremely overpowered belief and should definitely be nerfed.

 

[Amrunril]

I disagree that production is a balance problem. On higher difficulties, that's the point: you're not supposed to be able to outproduce the AI. At every stage of the game, there are intelligent decisions you must make regarding how you focus your production. Wonders are usually a poor idea in the early game because you would need to focus too narrowly in order to complete them. Mid game, wonders can still take a long time, but with trade routes they are definitely possible. And late game, you have a lot more flexibility, so producing just about anything is possible if that's your focus. The only production topic I would argue was not properly balanced was space ship projects, which were fixed in the previous patch.
Yes, districts can take a ludicrously long time to build later on in the game. However, if they were not, they would be grossly overpowered. You can still work around it to finish it if you want to, but you need to plan and appropriate your resources accordingly, like switching trade routes and using builders to cut trees. This is basically the point of strategy games: deciding what is worth your time now, and how best to accomplish it.
Great people are absolutely possible early game, even on deity. Like anything, you just have to make it a priority. Sometimes you don't even need to do city projects to get them; Divine Spark will often get your there anyway. In my opinion, it's an extremely overpowered belief and should definitely be nerfed.

My point isn't that it hard to outproduce the AI but rather that it's difficult for your production to keep up with your own science, culture, growth etc (the AI has exactly the same problem). In a well balanced game, you would sometimes be bottlenecked by production, but just as often, you would be bottlenecked by science, population growth or some other factor. As the game stands now, production is the bottleneck the vast majority of the time, even if you build industrial zones and commercial hubs as your highest priority districts and consistently run production focused government policies. [I also completely disagree that ludicrously long district build times are needed to prevent any sort of imbalance (I don't even think it makes any more sense to say districts would be overpowered- you wouldn't say "buildings are overpowered" or "units are overpowered"). Chopping and trade route distribution are important and interesting strategic mechanics, but they shouldn't be required simply to access a core mechanic like districts in the late game.]

As for great people, it is possible to earn them in the early game, but it requires warping your gameplay to a massive extent, while mid to late game great people and wonders are often achievable with minimal effort on the same difficulties, and while the AI completely stalls out in the late game and almost seems to go out of its way to avoid winning the game. This massive discrepancy in challenge levels between stages of the game makes it impossible to set up a single player game that will have your desired level of difficulty, whatever that level is, all the whole way through.

 

[PYITE]

The alert function is working perfectly for me now. Even woke up when a barbarian worker came in range. City ranged attack alert also works but only if you have auto end turn enabled.

 

[nzcamel]

City ranged attack alert also works but only if you have auto end turn enabled.

That's where you don't click the arrow, the next turn just starts automatically when you've done everything you need right?
I used to have it that way for the early turns in IV; but I don't think I'll ever have it automatic in VI.

 

[sa1vy]

[I also completely disagree that ludicrously long district build times are needed to prevent any sort of imbalance (I don't even think it makes any more sense to say districts would be overpowered- you wouldn't say "buildings are overpowered" or "units are overpowered"). Chopping and trade route distribution are important and interesting strategic mechanics, but they shouldn't be required simply to access a core mechanic like districts in the late game.]

If you build 20 junk cities mid-late game to build 20 holy sites in 10 turns each, that's pretty overpowered. If you build 20 junk cities mid-late game and build 20 commercial zones, that's pretty overpowered. If you put campuses or theater squares with them, you can go through the trees ridiculously quickly. By the time that district costs become unreasonably high, you should already be on your way well enough that you don't need more districts. If you don't put some limit on it around mid-game, it blows totally out of proportion.
I already think that being able to put down junk cities at turn ~160 and then build resorts is way overpowered.

 

[Victoria]

Dunno why so many people dislike Victoria. She's incredibly good. You can steamroll better with her than anybody IMO.

I pushed sciennce and got early redcoats , typical vicky unstoppable, idc if most people think she is bad.

Well AI is still no better but units are definately upgraded, planes as well.
It is definately training seige units
Genrally not many units to defend itself but you must remember that they have badly designed cities still and really bad amenity issues
Some improvements including planes but meh

I do love the -12 for having one of their cities, +14 for freeing one of their cities.

 

[sa1vy]

I pushed sciennce and got early redcoats , typical vicky unstoppable, idc if most people think she is bad.

Well AI is still no better but units are definately upgraded, planes as well.
It is definately training seige units
Genrally not many units to defend itself but you must remember that they have badly designed cities still and really bad amenity issues
Some improvements including planes but meh

I do love the -12 for having one of their cities, +14 for freeing one of their cities.

Yeah, she seemed really good to me, especially on culture. Those themed archaeology museums, pretty powerful.
Does the AI really have big problems with amenities? Can't they just magically give the AI extra amenities, like they did in CiV?
Anyway, I swear, my first thought when reading the balance changes was that Victoria (you) wasn't going to be very happy with the nerf to harbors. Though, thinking about it, playing as England you could just build Royal dockyards, and production spent on commercial districts could instead be invested in something else. So it's not a huge loss for her.