Cromagnus
Deity
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2012
- Messages
- 2,272
Seriously, does anyone know? Do they read the forums at the 2k site? I want to know where to send this email.
The following issues are all significant and worthy of attention. I think most people on the forums would agree, so the question is, what's the best way to get these into the next patch?
Here it is:
1) The 5%/city science nerf is too extreme.
This has nerfed the AI tremendously. It nerfed player wide empires so much that quite a few social policies/UAs/UBs/beliefs are now ineffective. Try 4%, or even 3%. Please? It's an easy change.
2) You should not be able to repair pillaged improvements in enemy territory.
This has made The Pyramids the new Statue of Zeus, and makes Liberty clearly superior for Domination. It's an easy change.
3) Honor needs a boost, even if they nerf pillage-healing.
This isn't as straightforward, and there are lots of suggestions, but I think most people would agree that:
*The happiness and culture shouldn't be tied to garrisons. This is vastly more appropriate for self-defense than it is for offense. Walls was never appropriate either.. again, they're for defense.
* Increasing the spawn rate of generals in no way fixed Honor. Honor didn't need help taking cities. That isn't the hard part of playing with Honor. The hard part is overcoming the slow cultural boundary expansion, happiness issues, slow growth and resulting tech imbalance. If you're supposed to be taking cities instead of building them, then the newly-increased penalty for early city capture hurts Honor most of all.
* The production/combat bonuses shouldn't apply to only melee units. This perhaps made sense before archers/CBs/XBows became the most effective way to attack cities, but it no longer makes any sense, and at the very least it should apply to rifling units, possibly even siege units, to make them more appealing than CBs for offense.
4) The penalty for city capture is too high for City-States.
It breaks the way Genghis Khan was intended to play. It's an unfair advantage to Austria and Venice, who are now the only civs who can afford to capture a CS.
5) The penalty for city capture is too high in the early game.
It's now a bad idea to use take cities before the Medieval Era. This devalues ancient and classical UU's designed for conquest. This penalizes Assyria, Attila, Rome, Monte and Shaka, among others. Especially Assyria/Attila, who's UU can ONLY be used for city capture. Even the Celts UU description states "... Perfectly suited for early rushes..."
If early rushes are not intended to result in city capture, then building all those melee units is an expensive waste right now in the gold-limited BNW environment.
6) Piety benefits are too delayed for a "starting" policy tree.
There's no culture until the closer, no happiness at all, and even the indirect bonuses that you can get via faster faith generation don't come until too late. 200 faith for your first +happiness/+culture building (assuming that this is how Piety is supposed to give you happiness and culture) takes too long to accumulate, especially if you want to get a decent enhancer belief. Tradition and Liberty give you immediate advantages that have great synergy with each other. Piety starts to help mostly after t100.
7) Piety doesn't help secure you a pantheon, let alone a religion.
You aren't planting your second city until t30 at the earliest, and even if you build a shrine first, it isn't helping until t35. The 1st policy comes too late to start building your first shrine. The 2nd policy comes too late to get a pantheon from the +2 faith. You don't get temples until Theology. The closer comes too late to get a religion. And until you DO get a religion, nothing in the tree has any value. Imagine if nothing in Liberty or Tradition gave benefit until t70...
The civs who found pantheons are invariably those who a) find faith ruins, b) settle their second city near a Natural Wonder, or c) find a faith CS.
Something in Piety should guarantee you a pantheon or religion (if there is one left) without forcing you to sacrifice growth/culture/etc. Perhaps this is mostly a difficulty level balance issue, but Piety should be viable on every difficulty level.
8) Rationalism is so strong it's the no-brainer policy. It needs the nerf bat, somehow.
I suggest reducing secularism to +1/specialist. That'll be enough to make the other trees more tempting.
The following issues are all significant and worthy of attention. I think most people on the forums would agree, so the question is, what's the best way to get these into the next patch?
Here it is:
1) The 5%/city science nerf is too extreme.
This has nerfed the AI tremendously. It nerfed player wide empires so much that quite a few social policies/UAs/UBs/beliefs are now ineffective. Try 4%, or even 3%. Please? It's an easy change.
2) You should not be able to repair pillaged improvements in enemy territory.
This has made The Pyramids the new Statue of Zeus, and makes Liberty clearly superior for Domination. It's an easy change.
3) Honor needs a boost, even if they nerf pillage-healing.
This isn't as straightforward, and there are lots of suggestions, but I think most people would agree that:
*The happiness and culture shouldn't be tied to garrisons. This is vastly more appropriate for self-defense than it is for offense. Walls was never appropriate either.. again, they're for defense.
* Increasing the spawn rate of generals in no way fixed Honor. Honor didn't need help taking cities. That isn't the hard part of playing with Honor. The hard part is overcoming the slow cultural boundary expansion, happiness issues, slow growth and resulting tech imbalance. If you're supposed to be taking cities instead of building them, then the newly-increased penalty for early city capture hurts Honor most of all.
* The production/combat bonuses shouldn't apply to only melee units. This perhaps made sense before archers/CBs/XBows became the most effective way to attack cities, but it no longer makes any sense, and at the very least it should apply to rifling units, possibly even siege units, to make them more appealing than CBs for offense.
4) The penalty for city capture is too high for City-States.
It breaks the way Genghis Khan was intended to play. It's an unfair advantage to Austria and Venice, who are now the only civs who can afford to capture a CS.
5) The penalty for city capture is too high in the early game.
It's now a bad idea to use take cities before the Medieval Era. This devalues ancient and classical UU's designed for conquest. This penalizes Assyria, Attila, Rome, Monte and Shaka, among others. Especially Assyria/Attila, who's UU can ONLY be used for city capture. Even the Celts UU description states "... Perfectly suited for early rushes..."
If early rushes are not intended to result in city capture, then building all those melee units is an expensive waste right now in the gold-limited BNW environment.
6) Piety benefits are too delayed for a "starting" policy tree.
There's no culture until the closer, no happiness at all, and even the indirect bonuses that you can get via faster faith generation don't come until too late. 200 faith for your first +happiness/+culture building (assuming that this is how Piety is supposed to give you happiness and culture) takes too long to accumulate, especially if you want to get a decent enhancer belief. Tradition and Liberty give you immediate advantages that have great synergy with each other. Piety starts to help mostly after t100.
7) Piety doesn't help secure you a pantheon, let alone a religion.
You aren't planting your second city until t30 at the earliest, and even if you build a shrine first, it isn't helping until t35. The 1st policy comes too late to start building your first shrine. The 2nd policy comes too late to get a pantheon from the +2 faith. You don't get temples until Theology. The closer comes too late to get a religion. And until you DO get a religion, nothing in the tree has any value. Imagine if nothing in Liberty or Tradition gave benefit until t70...
The civs who found pantheons are invariably those who a) find faith ruins, b) settle their second city near a Natural Wonder, or c) find a faith CS.
Something in Piety should guarantee you a pantheon or religion (if there is one left) without forcing you to sacrifice growth/culture/etc. Perhaps this is mostly a difficulty level balance issue, but Piety should be viable on every difficulty level.
8) Rationalism is so strong it's the no-brainer policy. It needs the nerf bat, somehow.
I suggest reducing secularism to +1/specialist. That'll be enough to make the other trees more tempting.
