Autumn 2017 Patch General Discussion

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

I played an Emperor continents last night to check out the naval difference.

Early game I attacked Catherine with an archer rush and she was waiting with archers. Any badly damaged archer she pulled back for recovery and the seemed to target single units more for death.
Scouts still seem to be a favourite target and did help me to take her cities.

I then took out Fred in a few turns, he had 1 slinger and 1 warrior to defend 2 cities and did not build more when I attacked.

Out at sea I met a Jong with a galley and quietly backed off. She did not like my lack of religion and 15 turns later was at my door with 4 jongs, a caravel and an invasion force which landed up a bit from my cities. It seemed to be a dual land /sea based attack on Manchester. My land units happily defended and I had 3 caravels which, with my city walls managed to destroy 5 without loss. If she had stayed at sea with her invasion force I would have been in trouble but it's quite a complex thing to do.
For naval attack I struck and killed the caravel, got damaged and retreated, healed... no pursuit. Came back and took out 2 jongs and the last 2 were then dead meat so stayed and killed them.

In conclusion,
Military civs seem to put up more of a fight, non military ones less.
A proper sea force and with invasion force which is a vast improvement in my eyes.
There was some 1 turn tactics working better but overall a 5 to 3 naval force being wiped out with no loss told me what I knew already. They can increase the intelligence but sea battles are more complex than a chess board, especially visibility seems key to response.

I must say, regardless I enjoyed myself more and was worried for a turn or 2

Did you start too close to other civs? People are complaining about that after the patch.

 

[Victoria]

Nope, well Aachen was about 12 tiles away but behind a mountain, Paris was about 10... is that closer then before?

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Nope, well Aachen was about 12 tiles away but behind a mountain, Paris was about 10... is that closer then before?

Then you are lucky.
Anybody else experiencing the issue with civs spawning too close to one another? I wonder how common this bug is.

 

[Swissy]

Then you are lucky.
Anybody else experiencing the issue with civs spawning too close to one another? I wonder how common this bug is.

It's dependent on the settings you use. More likely if you just use the basic pick your civ create a game interface, less likely if you go to advance game settings and play with low seas and reduce the number of city states.

Nope, well Aachen was about 12 tiles away but behind a mountain, Paris was about 10... is that closer then before?

The previous minimum distance test was 10, so those are more like a pre-patch start.

 

[Brutus2]

I'm still not noticing any blur, but I'll check my setting when I load my game up shortly. It's possible I'm not on high. But I have a pretty high end video card, it's not a cheapo. But I may have lowered settings some point in the past in an effort to speed up in between turn times.

After playing a few more games I have noticed the motion blur is worse with some leaders than others. With the two new leaders for example it is barely noticeable but I found Phillip, Alex, and Gilgamesh to be much more noticeable.

 

[Buckets]

I am pleased that the trade route list sorts now according to the selected yield.

 

[agonistes]

Anyone else having the game freeze now and again when moving a unit? I've had it happen three times now.

 

[ViterboKnight]

I'm confused.
Khmer and Polinesia are listed as new additions of the Autumn Patch.
In the same time, they appear as a new DLC at about 9€.

So, are these two new civilizations available for free with the Patch, or must they be purchased with the DLC?

After installing the patch, I cannot see the two civs as possible selections...

 

[Browd]

The free patch does not include Khmer or Indonesia (there is no Polynesia) or the new scenario. For those, you need to buy the DLC.

 

[Victoria]

are these two new civilizations available for free with the Patch

Nope ... pay pay pay

What really annoys me about the diplomacy screen is the most important information is this. I would really just like to see Total = 0 on the front screen

But the summary screen does not give me my currently diplomacy balance, the most important thing for me to quickly judge by...There is plenty of space for it, instead for EVERY frigging civ I have to drill down. For those that are not aware... I could ask for friends with a civ but with a value of 0 it is less likely so I would not bother but try and get open borders or tgrade route first... Gonna try and get some good relationships this game.

 

[conorbebe]

This is my main problem with the new diplomacy screen. It just obscures information and requires more clicks than before. It’s like the pop-up window they added to the deal screen that only made changing values more complicated.

And need I bring up again all the unused space? Maybe it looks better on a lower resolution, but there is so much screen space that contains nothing and just blocks out the art in the background. What’s even more laughable is that sometimes the text in the buttons at the bottom of the screen is cut off because the buttons haven’t been adjusted to fill the extended width of the window.

It’s a shame because apart from that and a couple of other minor gripes, this patch seems really solid so far. The AI, although still largely incompetent, seems to have improved at least. They are more sensible with trade deals, and now even offer alliances. Although I think the new religion lens could still be clearer, it’s a big step up. I just absolutely hate this diplomacy UI change.

 

[Takfloyd]

I'm confused.
Khmer and Polinesia are listed as new additions of the Autumn Patch.
In the same time, they appear as a new DLC at about 9€.

So, are these two new civilizations available for free with the Patch, or must they be purchased with the DLC?

After installing the patch, I cannot see the two civs as possible selections...

If you have the Deluxe edition of the game, you get the DLC for free with the patch. In that case, you just have to activate it on Steam. Otherwise you have to pay for it.

 

[Westwall]

I'll believe the AI improvements when I see them. Firaxis hasn't exactly had the best track record for AI tuning for a while now.

 

[bladex]

one thing i'm glad they finally fixed. in the later eras if you changed policies for me it would mirco freeze afterwards for up to 30 secs! finally gone

 

[RohirrimElf]

one thing i'm glad they finally fixed. in the later eras if you changed policies for me it would mirco freeze afterwards for up to 30 secs! finally gone

I`ve started to take notice of this as well. Have to see how it plays out as i just reached the renaissance era.
It could very well reduce waiting time by about 10 minutes when i`m done with my game. (I`ve got a very highend system)

This might be one of those changes that are not noted in the patch notes but make a very big change. It could have been mentioned by the developers.

 

[Phoenix1595]

What are your thoughts on stupas? I'm curious because I would like to shift over to using them and eliminate the need for entertainment districts (I usually build one just for Collosseum if I need happiness, which seems a waste of a district).

 

[Sobaka]

Having played 1.1 games I can definately say the goody huts give better at higher level, population seems quite pop, I've just had a trader and a builder on emperor

I have been playing at Deity all of 2017, and this started happening after the Summer 2017 patch. Not quite at the beginning of the game, but playing on Marathon and Island Plates, if there are goody huts available, many, many of them spawn builders and traders. In some games, I have had 3 or 4 traders sleeping in my capital and builders sleeping in cities waiting for trade route capacity/boarder expansion respectively to do something.

It has especially happened after sailing was researched. If not enough science to get the scouts out, I would send a builder to the nearest islands with 1 build left to get the huts - most of them have been low yield gold or 20+ faith, but at least 20% are high yield builders, traders, or tech/civic boosts - so I do not think this is new.

A fix for the starting locations bug:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/assignstartingplots-lua-from-v-1-0-0-167.623581/

Highly recommend making the fix before starting a new game.

YnAMP mod fixes the starting locations and I believe is already updated. I cannot play this game without either the mentioned mod or QUI - they are a must.

 

[Sobaka]

Ok, but why ignore the reality of 2 million players?



I agreed with that in my previous post.
However there is no such thing as "the player", so what you think is
"objective", isn't.



I think that can be a good thing. There are hidden variables and obscure weights
that players get a feel for by playing the game over a long time, and not by
consulting a D&D-like table that tells them exactly how many D6's and D100's to
roll, and precisely what number they need to succeed or fail.

You might prefer strategy games with every rule and random variable defined
explicitly - I don't. I want to feel (or suspend disbelief that I'm deluding
myself) that I discovered something like an easter egg that nobody else has
noticed.

A UI that deliberately misleads is clearly and objectively deficient.



That didn't parse. Did you mean "minute" as in tiny, or as in 60 seconds?



You are comparing Civ 4, a completed toy world, with something far more complex
and not yet realised in full. (Note that I don't mean it's in alpha stage, just
far from having all features implemented.)

I accept, however, that there are dozens of other (reproducible) mistakes in the
game that should be fixed when they feel it's timely.



Haha. All but conspiratorial crapola!
But if you're introducing psipowers & mind-reading, unfounded supposition, and
pretending to have inside insight into motives, let me to throw in some of my
own...

Firstly, the game maintains a huge following, with a big majority seemingly
unconcerned with UI problems that you and a minority see as egregiously awful.
Given that, why would Firaxis stray from what looks like a successful plan so far?
If Firaxis are designing and releasing to some 5-year plan (say), which
includes provision for incremental hardware improvements and income streams,
then they may well be right on target.



Maybe their devs and bean-counters got it right by devoting finite resources to
DLC instead of to low-priority items, like a UI that doesn't suit the tail end
of a distribution they know far better than outsiders like us.

I wish they hadn't spent so much on some aspects, like voice actors and artwork,
instead of on my preferences, but I would have bought the game if it had been
released a year earlier with XKCD quality graphics. See, I have standards too.

Even if Firaxis did expect the community to tailor the UI to those who don't
like it, what's the problem?

If your ideal UI, for your impossibly ideal player, had been adopted for Civ 6,
would you expect the community to fix it if it didn't suit some players?
Or would you hardwire it, and then tell any disgruntled, ungrateful sob's that
because your "ideal player" loves it, so must they?



Are you a UI dev? (c.f. "To a cobbler there's nothing like leather." - Tolstoy.)



That user, again. It's not designed for one player in a darkened Platonic cave.
At each stage it should be acceptable to a large majority of the entire player
base. And at the end, it should have been good enough for most players over the
lifetime of the game so that they'd crawl over broken glass for the next version.
Sound familiar? Yes, welcome to CFC.



Same here, Except that I don't "respect" any abstract concepts, like standards or
markets.

I accept that there are thousands of minor improvements that could be made, and
many bugs that should be fixed; many by Firaxis themselves, many that modders
will no doubt pounce on.
But you haven't made anywhere near a convincing case that the UI's deficiencies
and bugs have ruined the enjoyment of the game for a vast majority of the
players, or that the sales of the game are suffering because of the UI.

(The bit where you entered the minds of Firaxis devs and uncovered their hidden
motives was funny though.)

Ferocitus - disagree with you. The UI is bad. It does not compare with Civ 5, which I thought was terrible compared to Civ 4. Long time customers are what keeps titles going - loyal fans. That loyal fans keep on buying Civ and playing it is, in my opinion, a hope that things will get better and improved, and 'we' do not want to go back to a previous versions as part of this (some do stick with previous versions). Think Star Wars - the Prequels were not great, TFA was not up to expectations, etc., but I will continue to see all the movies over and over again. Point - I am a loyal fan of civ and will continue to play new versions when they come out (only with the most comprehensive mods at this point). But new potential consumers may not develope into loyal fans with continued UI, AI, balance, etc. issues. That will spell the death of the game at some point, imo. As for your point on the UI not ruining the enjoyment of the game, of course it does not for loyal fans - we will always play another turn - but my hope is that the UI improves dramatically nonetheless. Sales - time will tell.

Unit information for example - does any long term civ player think that the vanilla unit information or manipulation is good? Production queue? City information on amenities and housing? Trade routes? The UI as it is gives way too much useless text, and not enough information on one screen to decide what to do as a player in the game to improve. The UI is the worst of all Civ titles, and I challenge any long term fan to prove otherwise.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I play on level King, standard speed, small continents map. It is turn 252 (the year 1705) and Kongo is 22 techs ahead of me (58 over 36). And it's only level king. I have never seen that before although I really play a lot. Is that normal or was my AI opponent just especially lucky?

Post some screenshots or upload a save if you can.

Kongo is just a stronk AI. One of the last King games I played before this patch he had walls before 1500 BC! I took his capital but he's still able to keep up.

I mean look at this crap; this is from a screenshot I took from this game. (too bad saves don't work anymore). He's actaully not even that far behind in science despite losing his capital early and was winning in culture.

There's also my post in earlier this thread from this patch where I posted saves where Kongo is still threatening culture even though he was doing kinda bad otherwise. Well, still ahead of other AIs after losing cities.



In fact sometimes I like playing as Kongo because that means I don't have to deal with it.

Ironically though this is actually because the other AIs suck as since they cannot keep up, he just scoops all the great people. If you have some decent kind of faith generation by capturing an early holy site or can build oracle, or have some kind of natural bonus like India or Russia, you can slow him down a bit by purchasing the first great writer.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

I'll get back to you on that, just as soon as I get this Ctrl+S to save my game....