Collated list of remaining issues

[PiR]

I had M&C mode active so I don't know what's breaking the AI. I was playing on Prince though. Maybe the AI is smarter on lower levels.

 

[Alaindor]

Something about the AI priorities I guess... my settings were: marathon / huge maps / deity / MC HL SS BC modes / no mods

 

[Pietato]

Dirty capitalism mode bankrupts them faster. But they are failing to participate in those emergencies even without the mode on.

 

[Alaindor]

Dirty capitalism mode bankrupts them faster. But they are failing to participate in those emergencies even without the mode on.

... which in my observations was not the case before the April patch: "something has changed" and was not documented in the patch notes.

 

[Pietato]

... which in my observations was not the case before the April patch: "something has changed" and was not documented in the patch notes.

Yep. Or a bug.

 

[PiR]

I also had a game where the AI built 0 wonder... I tried again in Deity, but no. Then I tried with an Ancient Start and yes. Maybe they don't build wonders with late starts. It's weird.

 

[iammaxhailme]

No screenshot, but I had to actually compete with some AIs today in a natural disaster emergency (emperor difficulty, I think heroes and legends is the only mode I have on)

 

[Pietato]

I was just the target of a disaster emergency, and the 5 people to were involved gave me 0 gold.

I have also noticed that your allies pretty much always vote against a disaster emergency for you, and Gandhi was voting against every single emergency.

 

[acluewithout]

I have compiled what I believe to be the remaining major issues. Please tell me if I missed anything obvious.


Game Modes

Apocalypse
- Offensive storms created by the Soothsayer need to be more destructive.

Barbarian Clans
- Sea clans creates some extremely deadly water barbs, which need to be toned down slightly. Delaying their city attacks would probably be best, so that it becomes possible to start by the ocean and properly prepare before the turn 20 attack.
- Snow clans are turning into city-states which have zero yields, do not grow, and remain with obsolete units.
- Zombies will completely ignore City-States which used to be barbarian camps.
- Barbarians are the tech leaders, with units way ahead of the curve until the later eras. Is this intended?

Dramatic Ages
- Zombies need to be able to attack Free Cities, otherwise you cannot use Dramatic Ages and Zombie Defense mode at the same time without the game becoming off.
- Fix the Culture Industry negative production bug which completely breaks the game.

Monopolies and Corporations
- Bug where AI does not improve resources until they unlock Economics needs to be fixed.
- Issue where monopolies generate extreme of amounts tourism, ending the game quickly, needs to be addressed.

Secret Societies
- Ley lines not being visible before picking Hermetic Order means that you either roll the dice and pray, or you reload and pick another society.
- Alchemical Society upgrade for the 2nd promotion of the Hermetic Order is often unlocked before you can even build universities, and should probably be swapped with the 3rd promotion (and then buffed). This would also bring the Hermetic Order up to the level of the other 3, by giving Ley Lines earlier yields.
- Vampire castles do not dynamically update their yields, which means you need to move your vampires all the way back to create a whole new castle to gain improved yields. The vampire is the slowest unit in the game, and is often attacking on the other side of the map, which makes this is very painful. Making the castle update yields dynamically each turn would fix this.
- Vampires have inconsistent rules when inheriting unit strength, and sometimes fail to do it. They should inherit the strength of your strongest permanent unit, no matter how it was acquired, and should inherit corps/army strength when merged. Giant Death Robots should also be included in this (why were they excluded in the first place?).
- Gilded Vault upgrade for the 2nd promotion of the Owls of Minerva can be unlocked a long, long time before you can get Banks. Perhaps move the Gilded Vault to something like Mathematics.
- The Owls of Minerva 4th promotion is very weak and needs to be changed.


Civilisation Balance

China
- Crouching Tiger is still a bad unit, and should be a Trebuchet replacement.

Cree
- Their trade bonus is great for domestic trade routes, but these tend to be quickly outshone by international ones. Maybe domestic trade routes need a buff in general.
- Additionally, their unique unit needs a complete rework. Babylon's UU is what a real scout looks like.

Egypt
- Egypt is now entirely about their unique unit, and just killing your neighbours. If they had a floodplains Appeal bonus, like Brasil does with rainforests, then they could be a lot more infrastructure based with Preserves.

Eleanor
- She needs something in addition to her loyalty ability, as this is sometimes impossible to leverage. Perhaps something like 'does not lose Diplomatic Favour for holding enemy capitals'.

France
- Tourism from wonders is very low, and the boost does basically nothing.
- The Chateau unlocks too late for how restrictive it is.

Georgia
- Faith from kills is very weak after the first era, and is only really useful for getting an early pantheon.

Mansa Musa
- His Golden Age trade route ability should be changed, in light of all the superior recent trade civs. He should gain a trade route for each new era HE hits, not the world, and gain increased trade route yields from Golden ages.

Poland
- A weak civ who got weaker with the latest patch. Relic play needs to be more controllable without lucky city-states or Secret Societies.
- Poland is also designed around building 3 districts: Encampments, Holy Sites and Commercial Hubs, while also having their unique unit unlocked through culture, which is quite harsh.
- The Winged Hussar is just too weak. It needs baseline advantages over the Cuirassier at the very least.

Scotland
- Golf course's adjacency bonuses are very poor, and Wars of Liberation are too rare. Scotland basically has one ability, and that became harder to maximise after the amenity change.
- The Highlander is very weak, being based on the weak Ranger.

Vietnam
- Aerodromes should also not require a marsh/rainforest/forest, to make late-game desert and snow cities for resources less painful, and to also give another option for floodplains. They already require flat land, so it is strange that you have to plant a forest to build them to begin with.

Wilhelmina
- Radio Oranje's culture bonus needs to scale up slightly with era.

Overpowered civs
- There are quite a few civs which are overly strong, but it seems nerfing is not favoured when balancing, plus people like trying out new overpowered toys. So maybe they can be left like that for now.


Districts and Buildings

- The buildings in the Preserve are much too expensive, which is severely limiting their usage. The Preserve should also be allowed in National Parks.
- Sewer is weak for its cost. Maybe give it a power bonus of an amenity.
- Stock Exchange generally never pays back its cost.
- Neighbourhoods are still too weak.


Policy Cards

- Free Market is badly designed card, as +4 Commercial Hubs are extremely uncommon unless you the Owls of Minerva, plus there are much better cards for making gold.
- Grand Opera is a very weak card, as Theatre district buildings do not produce much culture (it comes from the great works).
- Public Transport really cannot be run in the competitive economic slot, even if you have multiple Neighbourhoods with breathtaking appeal. Plus, Kongo, the one who might actually spam (unique) Neighbourhoods, will have low appeal from rainforests and will not benefit from it.
- Propaganda, which replaces Retainers, is a vastly inferior card.
- Rationalism seems to be limited to Korea and Australia.


Unit Balance

- The entire Recon line of units is pretty much useless, especially when you have Barbarian Clans and/or Zombie Defense mode activated. They do not do their job well after the ancient era, and die when looked at.
- Late game oil-upkeep Melee units are much, much weaker and slower than the equivalent Heavy Cavalry, to the point where melee is better off left un-upgraded. As I do not see a proper oil balance pass in the future, it would probably be best to just remove the oil upkeep from melee, making them cheaper (they cost around the same as heavy cavalry), and making Tanks and Modern Tanks more expensive.
- Light cavalry are also better off left un-upgraded, as Helicopters are weak and use up valuable and rare aluminium which is much better off used for planes.
- Aircraft Carriers need more melee strength, an anti-air value, a new way to gain experience, and increased plane capacity when formed into armadas and fleets. They currently get one shot, have to melee things with their low strength to gain promotions, and serve their role better when not merged.
- Anti-Cavalry are still not doing their job.


Pantheons

These are still imbalanced, especially now that early faith is so important. Adding appeal would also open up more Preserve usage and make thematic sense, as the objects/sites of worship should not be unappealing.
- Fertility Rites changed to +2 food in the city centre, 20% increased growth rate and a free builder.
- Fire goddess changed to: Tiles adjacent to a volcano gain +2 faith and +1 appeal. Geothermal fissures gain +2 faith and +1 food. Fire goddess is currently very weak because volcanic soil has to actually be produced before it works, and Geothermal fissures are extremely bad tiles to work (great to settle on, though). This change should help with both issues.
- God of Craftsmen (Gambling) changed to +1 production and +2 faith.
- Goddess of the Hunt changed to +1 food, +1 production and +1 appeal.
- Lady of the Reeds and Marshes changed to +2 production and +1 appeal.
- Religious Idols changed to +2 faith and +2 appeal.
- Stone Circles changed to +2 faith and +2 appeal.


Religion

- Passive religious pressure is too weak, and needs to be buffed. This also makes the pressure beliefs, Itinerant Preachers and Scripture, rubbish.
- Work Ethic is too good in nearly all situations.
- Zen Meditation is too weak and generic.
- Warrior Monks never do anything.
- Missionary Zeal should also ignore ZoC.
- Stewardship and Lay Ministry need higher values. One gold is not equal to one science/culture.
- Worship buildings are too expensive.


Natural Wonders and General Appeal

Preserves have made most of the rubbish Natural Wonders much better, but some are still bad due to lacking appeal or being unworkable.
- Mount Everest is huge, unworkable, spawns in a mountain chain and really bad. Please rework it.
- All lake and coastal tiles need their own appeal values, to improve both their tile values and Natural Wonders based on these tiles.
- Change the code so that Natural Wonders do not spawn surrounded by unworkable tiles, e.g A volcano wonder surrounded by mountains and water.


Other

- Add flooding and Dam placement to TSL maps when using GS rules.
- Golden Age dedications need to be balanced better, as currently Monumentality dominates.
- Maybe consider slowing the entire game down, especially when the beneficial Secret Societies are activated, so that the game goes beyond the Renaissance era.
- Stop AI from draining all their gold then deleting all their units.
- Pathing is still messed up, particularly in coastal areas. A move that could be done in a single turn, will take 2-3 because the pathing decides that disembarking and embarking is better than just sailing around the tiny piece of land.
- AI do not seem to be interacting with disaster emergency competitions properly. Might have something to do with their recent lack of gold.
- Finish the World Builder.

Yeah. All of that.

This list is very patch focused, which is totally fine. There’s a bunch of things I’d like to see, but most stray out of patchable content, and get a little bit into more content.

But a few small things I’d add.

• Workshop. This is still very weak and unfun.

• Lumbermills. These are fine in terms of yields, but they really should get back a river adjacency to be more interesting.

• Dedications. I agree these need a bit of a rebalance. I also think that with everything added into the game, 4 dedications per Era is not enough. It really needs to be 5.

• Spies. No spying on Allies was a mistake. I think there are a bunch of ways to fix this, but the simplest would be to just have a limited list of “non-aggressive” missions you could run in Allie Cities, eg Diplo Visibility.

• Game Mode, Dynamic Ages. I think this really does need a “normal age”. I get that’s just not the design of this mode, but I think there’s a lot of people that really want to play the game modes mechanics and are put off by the binary nature and swingyness of only dark or golden ages.
  
  
• Game Mode, Secret Societies. There needs to be more downside to the Secret Societies.

 

[JokerKara]

Greetings‍ I'm new here, my first post, I'm a fan of Civilization for over twenty years (although I didn't played Civ4). I specially created an account here to see what's going on - I just bought NFP and it's great, but it turned out that the game is broken now, mainly because of two things - AI does not build wonders and does not improve luxury resources, and worse - as were mention, monopolies generate extreme amounts of tourism, ending the game quickly. Is Firaxis really going to leave it like that without a patch? Because I don't know whether to keep playing or forget about the game.
PS. I play on PlayStation 4 if that matters.

 

[PiR]

Welcome @JokerKara!
You should try Civ 4
I had a try yesterday and with 0 mode activated, with Ancient Start, AI built wonders. If I chose a Modern or Information Start, then AI did not build any wonder.
So I would suggest to disable all official modes and try with an Ancient Start. In these conditions, AI should build wonders, improve luxury resources, and you won't have the issue with monopolies generateing extreme amounts of tourism.
Hopefully they fix all that, but in the meantime...

 

[UWHabs]

I also had a game where the AI built 0 wonder... I tried again in Deity, but no. Then I tried with an Ancient Start and yes. Maybe they don't build wonders with late starts. It's weird.

I haven't tried later starts so there may be something there, but I do find it very variable how the AI goes with wonders. Some games I can literally build any wonder anytime I want. Others, they are super aggressive at fighting for them and even if I get an engineer to help, I still get beat to them.

Yeah. All of that.

This list is very patch focused, which is totally fine. There’s a bunch of things I’d like to see, but most stray out of patchable content, and get a little bit into more content.

But a few small things I’d add.

• Workshop. This is still very weak and unfun.

• Lumbermills. These are fine in terms of yields, but they really should get back a river adjacency to be more interesting.

• Dedications. I agree these need a bit of a rebalance. I also think that with everything added into the game, 4 dedications per Era is not enough. It really needs to be 5.

• Spies. No spying on Allies was a mistake. I think there are a bunch of ways to fix this, but the simplest would be to just have a limited list of “non-aggressive” missions you could run in Allie Cities, eg Diplo Visibility.

• Game Mode, Dynamic Ages. I think this really does need a “normal age”. I get that’s just not the design of this mode, but I think there’s a lot of people that really want to play the game modes mechanics and are put off by the binary nature and swingyness of only dark or golden ages.
  
  
• Game Mode, Secret Societies. There needs to be more downside to the Secret Societies.

On workshops, I think one big "bug" left still is that it doesn't show you the CS bonuses to them by default. So in many games, I will "see" that a library gets better over time, sometimes in late game the library alone is worth 6 or 7 science. But they don't update the tooltip on the workshop, so while it might give me +6 or +7 production when building buildings, I just have to know that. So I do think they are better than you think, just the UI can't keep up. I definitely have some games with a lot of CS and buying a workshop can give a significant boost to production.

Lumbermill: agree a little they are a little bland, but at least with the bonuses to them, they become competitive with mines and make me think twice about chopping. I can live with the current model.

Dedications: agree too. Would also be really curious if there were, say, 6 or 8 possible bonuses, but you didn't get all of them as a choice. Would avoid the obvious "Golden Age -> Monumentality" slingshot if there was only a 50/50 chance that it was available in the current game.

Spies I would agree too. Cancelling the missions completely is a bit of a pain. Like, they could have given like a -4 or -5 modifier to missions on allies, so that basically you need a secret agent with the siphon funds promotion and the missions bonus mission complete for them to be back up to the 80-90% pct. If you paired that with a new CB relating to it or something, that would probably better simulate the modern spying. Maybe it means I can never get above like a 20% chance to disrupt rocketry, but at least it means there's still a possibility of it happening.

Dramatic Ages: Yeah, I like the aggressive golden/dark parts, but it's a little jarring. Although given it's a game mode, I don't mind. It just means it's a mode that's about 50/50 whether I have it on if I want a game with free city empires or not.

Secret Societies: Agreed as well. Given how many crazy bonuses they grant, would absolutely love to see them each come with some massive downside, so that they act like dark age cards. Like you can join the voidsingers, but if you do, then you don't gain any CS envoy bonuses. As it stands now, since they're basically all positive, I often feel that the society bonuses simply override inherrent civ bonuses so it always feels like I'm playing a "Voidinsgers" game and not a "Canada" game.

 

[JokerKara]

Hi PiR, thank you for the tip. The thing is - I found them add ons pretty entertaining, so it's difficult for me to start a game without them now. I don't play with all of them turned on, though. I really hope Firaxis team will patch it soon. There are many interesting suggestions in this post, I even didn't knew the game still have so many problems. My biggest issue, aside the two things I mentioned, is game speed - next eras fly to fast, and there's no moods on console version to slow down game pece. That's pretty annoying but I got used to that, as well as to poor AI. But these game breaking issues, I really hope they will deal with this soon, I want to play that game a lot, but in the current state, I just can't. BTW. I will check Civilization 4 at some point, if it will as fun as Civ 2 and 3 were, might be worth giving a shot.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

• Workshop. This is still very weak and unfun.

• Lumbermills. These are fine in terms of yields, but they really should get back a river adjacency to be more interesting.

Workshops gaining extra production for each lumbermill in the city would be interesting. Or maybe instead of each mine gaining +1 production upon researching Apprenticeship, the workshop could get the +1 production for every mine in the city.

 

[PiR]

My biggest issue, aside the two things I mentioned, is game speed

Can't you select game speed?

I will check Civilization 4 at some point, if it will as fun as Civ 2 and 3 were, might be worth giving a shot.

Then check out this part of the forum too https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-project-mod-development.215/

 

[JokerKara]

Can't you select game speed?
View attachment 599416

Then check out this part of the forum too https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-project-mod-development.215/

I will check it out, thanks! I was watching some of the YT let's play videos with Civilization 4, it's definitely have this old school vibes, more like old Civ games, than Civ 5 and 6, but at the moment, my computer is broken, so I'm only playing on console. And yes, of course I always play on Marathon, Huge map setting, but what I had in mind was, the techs should require more research, it's annoying having access to musketman few hundred years BC, it's completely breaking immersion. But I think Firaxis will not change it anymore, not in Civ 6, so my only hope they will address the other problems the game having, specially these game breaking.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Can't you select game speed?
View attachment 599416

Then check out this part of the forum too https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ4-project-mod-development.215/

It feels like the game speed is too fast at the beginning of the game and too slow at the late middle through the end. No matter what option you pick.

 

[PiR]

It feels like the game speed is too fast at the beginning of the game and too slow at the late middle through the end. No matter what option you pick.

True

 

[Pietato]

The overall game is too fast due to the massive power-creep which has happened over the past few years. It really needs to be slowed down (and eras balanced).

 

[Alaindor]

The overall game is too fast due to the massive power-creep which has happened over the past few years. It really needs to be slowed down (and eras balanced).

True even on Marathon which I always choose. Together with Deity, I seldom reach even world atomic era before the game is over