Pretty underwhelmed by the patch notes, we'll see how it plays later.
Booooo Elodie is a trash tier sponsor now. She gets what, probably 2 maybe 3 extra virtues a game? Completely pointless to pick her when those extra virtues are extremely unlikely to win you a game any faster than usual. The most important virtues come early (ex: free colonist which went untouched this patch, early +health virtues, early knowledge or industry "lol all the culture/science/energy" virtues) as they set up the late game, and at this point it looks like Barre's free OERs make him the better "cultural" sponsor option, especially now that Artists give even more culture for some bizarre reason. Elodie isn't going to be getting more than one of the important early virtues any faster than anyone else, she's just going to maybe end up with an extra virtue or two that the player didn't deem important enough to rush in the first place near the end of the game. Useless sponsor.
Trade depots can no longer be purchased with energy? How does that make sense? Lazy, lazy, lazy. If trade routes are actually being balanced there is no reason to stop trade depots from being rush purchased. At least the autoplant quest was nerfed but still, what the hell?
Still can't filter trade routes? What? How much of this game was copy-pasted from CiV, the ability to filter trade routes from that game was the one thing ctrl+c ctrl+v just couldn't accomplish? Also, would it be so hard to add an option to repeat a trade route indefinitely in the trade route overview, or add a button on the trade unit to instantly repeat last trade route? No, no it would not and I know this because there's a mod to do just that that Firaxis should have aped wholesale. I think I can safely say without hyperbole that just putting the previous route to the top is the very least that could have been done to improve the terrible trade route UI. Sigh, relying on mods to fix basic things still I see.
Was hoping for a way bigger shake-up on the techweb. Still lots of paths that aren't worth going down at all. To be fair that's a pretty big undertaking as there is a ton of work to be done on that mess, but still thought we were gonna see a bit more than we got.
Nice to see the big rebalances to units. No more "get to battlesuits/cndrs/xenoswarms, win game" is a step in the right direction. Also extremely happy to see combat rovers get their defensive bonuses taken away. No more impenetrable walls of purity +10% per unused movement rovers makes me a happy camper. Still a little concerned that battlesuits only requiring 1 titanium makes them superior to cndrs and xenoswarms though.
So, if Apollo AIs got buffed, and trade routes got nerfed, what's the timeframe for Apollo victories now? I'm going to be incredibly unimpressed if the AI is still winning anywhere from t200-250, while the player has been slowed down by the nerf to science leech (although spies look like they steal science at the same ridiculous rate, so there's that). Will not be impressed one bit if "rush academies, spam" is the new "rush autoplants, spam". Even if it isn't, if the game is still ending at these stupidly fast turn times I'm going to be befuddled by that design choice. I mean, would it really be so hard to make planetary wonders require more affinity to build to make the games last a more reasonable number of turns, and balance from there?
Edit: Right, I don't get the logic of "lets take this one extremely crappy wonder and buff it so it's only regular crappy, but lets ignore all the other extremely crappy wonders". Do all the wonders have their names in a hat, and Firaxis are gonna draw to see which wonder they buff every patch? Or did they actually say something like "New Terran Myth is perfectly balanced at +4 culture on it's own leaf tech that no one in their right mind would ever go out of their way to get except for achievement purposes, we can leave that wonder alone"? I get that wonders can't be too strong in this game, as the nature of the tech web makes it too easy to get them if you're dedicated to the idea, but come on.
Double edit: I take back the buff part about the Holon Chamber, that feels like a lateral move and nothing more. From not worth building to still not worth building doesn't qualify as a buff in retrospect.
Like I said, we'll see how it plays later but I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to be uninstalling after a couple games until the next big patch arrives. Maybe one day this game will get out of beta.
Still makes no sense at all to go for any wonder apart from some of the very early ones... disappointing, disappointing, disappointing... DISAPPOINTING!
