Death of Conventional Strategies? [11/18 Patch Notes]

[LDiCesare]

I think all those changes are good.

I never kept SP or promotions for later because I feel that's cheesy.

For promotions, it's just plain cheese and there's no realism involved.

For SPs, the removal is more annoying because it hinders getting some policies later on. I know that winning a cultural victory under these terms is a difficult chore. I sincerely think the whole SP system is crap, though, and should be ditched in favor of civics like in Civ IV.

The ai improvements are the most interesting part to me, and good moves.
The horsemen nerf is definitely not the one I'd have picked (reducing movement to 3) but may be enough to rebalance the units early on.

 

[elthrasher]

I'm optimistic about these changes. Most of them are debuffs, but I feel the game was already too easy. In Civ V I can pretty much always win on Immortal and have a shot on Deity. That is just about exactly a level above where I was on Civ IV (always win Emperor and a shot at Immortal). Not that Civ IV should necessarily be the gold standard for all Civilization, but I know I'm not the most efficient player. If I'm not the best but can still win on the hardest level, I'd say the game is too easy.

Forcing immediate SP choices probably means no more BC rifles - except maybe for Babylon, who might do it without the Rationalism slingshot (though you'd probably need the GL if libraries only support one scientist). I don't mind being forced to save those SPs for the later game, but I think it will make the tougher levels really challenging to not be able to delve very far into Rationalism or Order until the late game.

Mostly I think if I'm going to be prohibited from saving my SPs until renaissance, the earlier ones need to be buffed. Especially stuff like +1 food in capital and new cities start with a little food. That's just weak.

And yeah, this does nothing against ICS but hurts horsemen rush and early rifles. On the positive side, it does seem like they are listening.

 

[jorissimo]

Bobble wars is awesome.

 

[wurstburst]

Forcing immediate SP choices probably means no more BC rifles - except maybe for Babylon, who might do it without the Rationalism slingshot (though you'd probably need the GL if libraries only support one scientist). I don't mind being forced to save those SPs for the later game, but I think it will make the tougher levels really challenging to not be able to delve very far into Rationalism or Order until the late game.

The issue with this SP fix is that they ruined the whole system to fix two or three minor problems. First, there is the problem with culture wins via selling cities, then taking a ton of SP. The right fix for that is to save up a count of unused SP, determined at the time you earn them, rather than the time you use them. The second problem was the slingshot ability of the 2 free techs in rationalism. The correct fix for that is to make it one free tech (or some other nerf to that one SP) - that would really really slow down some abusive strategies. Other than that, I'm not aware of any severe abuse going on with the SP tree.

 

[elthrasher]

The issue with this SP fix is that they ruined the whole system to fix two or three minor problems. First, there is the problem with culture wins via selling cities, then taking a ton of SP. The right fix for that is to save up a count of unused SP, determined at the time you earn them, rather than the time you use them. The second problem was the slingshot ability of the 2 free techs in rationalism. The correct fix for that is to make it one free tech (or some other nerf to that one SP) - that would really really slow down some abusive strategies. Other than that, I'm not aware of any severe abuse going on with the SP tree.

I agree with you. I also wonder if this can't be gotten around with shift-enter. Can you do this to avoid selecting a tech?

 

[grzybek]

Point A: If you build a barracks or whatever building that provides free experience, you need to instantly promote your unit as it is built? That's called strategy?

Actually I don't understand where do you find strategy in going to the front with non-promoted unit and promote it according to what you find. That is not strategy it's adopting.

Strategy is when you plan in advance what you will do. When you prepare to what might come in front of you by scouting and producing proper units - not when you just produce a unit and you change it to "proper" instantly when enemy shows up. That's an exploit in my point.

 

[Antarion]

Should you be able to win in the ancient era, by turn 150, 250, etc?

Thats a game design decision and if people are winning too sooner than intended, its a design flaw.

but the problem ist ppl start to complain about it if the desinger take away ppls toys...

BUHUHU i cant abuse anymore my SPs saving strats...BUHUHU i must think outside my exploits...

thats ridicilous...a game should always last till atleast modern era if you want to win by culture, diplomacy or science. but these ppl here play it vs the AI ( i really hope firaxis does something about the MP technically problems cose thats the only real challenge for me) and try to find exploits or weakness in game mechanics. if firaxis fixes it they start to rampage, kinda stupid imho.

 

[eric_]

i hope they dont make them useless to take towns without walls (nerf to base strength plus city penalty is imho over the top), especially for mongols.

Agreed. Horses shouldn't have any problem wreaking havoc in an unwalled city.

And, at first I was annoyed about the insta-promotions, but I agree it will force more strategic use of promotions, where you have maybe on offensive army comprising medics and open terrain bonuses (to get through killing fields surrounding cities) and a defensive one making use of more defense-appropriate terrain.

As for SPs, I can live with it. My only cultural victory actually involved little to no stockpiling, and since then I've moved away from the practice altogether.

 

[Antarion]

I think all those changes are good.

I never kept SP or promotions for later because I feel that's cheesy.

For promotions, it's just plain cheese and there's no realism involved.

For SPs, the removal is more annoying because it hinders getting some policies later on. I know that winning a cultural victory under these terms is a difficult chore. I sincerely think the whole SP system is crap, though, and should be ditched in favor of civics like in Civ IV.

thats simply not true, and i posted even screens here to show the opposite.

but if you want culture in the modern era you must focus in modern times also on culture. imho this is the way the game should work.

i could you also show a game where i played with monti as warmonger and got both order and autocracy from his own UA, plus honor in ancient times. of course i only got 3-4 trees left before i won by domination but i did use all the SoPos right away. imho thats the way it should be not otherwise.

 

[LAnkou]

Is there a quite exhaustive list of abuse with SP? I note the following:
-Selling cities and get a lot of SP for cultural win
-getting to an Era and choosing a powerfull SP far in the SP tree, when it was intended to be unavailable at the beginning of the Era

The planned change effectively prevents that, however:
-accumulating SP choice (like how we accumulate Great people) would had prevent the first one
-the second is seriously nerf if the tech pace is slower, or at least if they are less great scientist to slingshot eras...you would have to wait a long time to trigger it and maybe you would rather choose to get an immediate "lesser" effect.
-In fact, it was a choice for the player to get an immediate "small" benefit or to wait for a bigger one (like you may want to research for 20+ turns a tech that would give you a big advantage opposite to the 6- turns lesser tech). That's the same principle with wonders BTW.
-There will be a painfull time when 1 or 2 turns later, you would have a new era tech opening new SP, but too bad, you got to choose a new policy. People will try to prevent this with "ready to settle" settlers in order to increase the SP cost. Or people will sell their building, not because they cost too much, but because they just do theire regular effect.

not quite out of topic, I'm desperatly waiting for a new patch notes saying conquered cities will have some buildings inside. Never seen anything else than wonders...Does the AI build buildings? or does all building get destroyed by conquest?

 

[JP1]

not quite out of topic, I'm desperatly waiting for a new patch notes saying conquered cities will have some buildings inside. Never seen anything else than wonders...Does the AI build buildings? or does all building get destroyed by conquest?

I regularly capture cities which still have buildings.

 

[Ahriman]

Never seen anything else than wonders...Does the AI build buildings? or does all building get destroyed by conquest

Happiness buildings seem to always be destroyed, and usually culture buildings.
Libraries and granaries and such seem to often be unscathed.
But I do wish fewer buildings were destroyed. It would be nice to lose a city and recapture it without that city being utterly worthless for the next few centuries.

 

[elthrasher]

Happiness buildings seem to always be destroyed, and usually culture buildings.
Libraries and granaries and such seem to often be unscathed.
But I do wish fewer buildings were destroyed. It would be nice to lose a city and recapture it without that city being utterly worthless for the next few centuries.

Happiness buildings remain. As far as I know, only cultural ones are destroyed. I regularly capture cities that have coliseums in them.

 

[Antarion]

i postulate thats not necessary to sell culture buildings to stop to gain culture. what i do as you said is to wait sometimes with a new city to be settled (but this is even a hint in the tooltip "if you over expand your empire you will loose on the cultural side").

instead ppl will learn if they want to get all out of a later tree either to choose the right moment to invest heavy in the piety tree ( i often just get 3 picks in this tree up to theocracy and then much later on turn back to finally get free religion) or to use opera houses, museums, the democracy (100% more culture in cities with wonders) effect combined maybe even with early aristrocacy (33% prod bonus for wonders) and even the broadcasttower like i did in my screen with even a heavy ICS strat. as france its not that big deal to get culture and still expand but nvm, just slow your ICS a bit if you dont play france AND plz dont overlook representation (+1 culture as 3rd or 4th policy is great even if some ppl dont wanna believe it)

 

[Ahriman]

Happiness buildings remain. As far as I know, only cultural ones are destroyed. I regularly capture cities that have coliseums in them.

Really? My bad. Must not have noticed. Thanks for the correction.

 

[Snapp]

IMO these changes make a lot of sense for the game.

The SP and Military promotion changes make the most logic sense, saving promotions and Solicy Policies could at times be interesting but it really made no sense at all that these could be saved indefinitely.

Sure, this changes a lot of the current strategies and a lot of the changes just appear to overall nerfs, so its understandable that people are upset about it, but I really think it is best for the game.

So many people have spent a lot of time complaining about how easy the game is, now they make a patch that will slow down your ability to achieve victory via certain methods and everyone is up in arms. IMO that doesn't make a lot of sense. So they didnt make the changes the way you wanted them, well to bad, man up and figure out new strategies on the new system.

- No one knows the extent of the science changes yet, so commenting on what it does and doesn't do is silly at best.

- You may want to micro unit exp to time your heals, and there is nothing wrong with that, but the truth of it is you won't always be able to, and you won't always want to. Sometimes it will be more valuable to kill that enemy chariot archer than it will be to hold on to your exp. Look at that... You now have to make choices and have a strategy...

- Getting late game SP is do-able at ANY number of bases up until a certain point, and that point is a lot higher than most think. Ive been over 30 cities and been still getting SPs.

- Timing expansion in order to prevent SP gain, this is not likely to happen much, if you are playing ICS you already struggle to get 3 SPs without building monuments. Yes it will now implement a strategy of potentially delaying construction of monuments and temples if you plan for late game SPs instead of early game, but I see nothing wrong with that. Its a strategy akin to saving SP until late game, its just a much slower method of doing it.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Early game policies are insanely weak (1 culture per city for 1 point...seriously?)...and you are forced to grab them.

Maintenance-free tile expansion? Sign me up!

They need to fix the randomized starts.
1. Every Civ deserves iron.
2. Every Civ deserves horses.
3. Every Civ deserves a reasonable food/production start (I have had a start with one +2 food tile and the rest were +1 food...didn't even bother trying to play that)
4. Getting stuck surrounded by 3 civs and then having all 2 declare war on you before turn 20.
5. City states and types should be more evenly spread.

I've got a better idea. Instead of a game, they should just have a screen with an "I win" button. For optimal play, we can have an "I won more quickly than you did" button.

 

[atteSmythe]

These changes are ********. -.-
"Hey lets nerf ever strategy used right now!"
Early game policies are insanely weak (1 culture per city for 1 point...seriously?)...and you are forced to grab them.

I don't think the +1 per city is meant to fuel SPs, though - I figure it gives each newly settled city a relatively early 'free' tile due to culture, without having to build a monument there first. This frees up your city placement somewhat, unless you're hurrying so much that you want to drop your city right on top of resources. It's not the strongest policy out there, but it's sort of interesting to me.

I'm just waiting for the next announced change: Great People must be used on the turn they're acquired.

 

[budweiser]

They need to fix the randomized starts.
1. Every Civ deserves iron.
2. Every Civ deserves horses.
3. Every Civ deserves a reasonable food/production start (I have had a start with one +2 food tile and the rest were +1 food...didn't even bother trying to play that)
4. Getting stuck surrounded by 3 civs and then having all 2 declare war on you before turn 20.
5. City states and types should be more evenly spread.

No they don't.

If thats what you want go play Star Craft.

This is a strategy game with plenty of options built in to allow you to overcome any of the 'unfair' starts you complain about.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Instead of bombing culture buildings, I think culture city states would be a better way of taking late SPs. Save up gold for the first half, then ally with 3 or 4 culture states as soon as you've entered the renaissance or industrial era. Siam would be good for this.

I should have been clearer on this one. I agree that optimal play will leverage Cultural city-states to accelerate Renaissance SP acquisition. I am simply thinking that timing Temple completion to coincide with the Renaissance and then bombing in a bunch of 35H Monuments a few turns later will be hot.

Siam will be strong for a host of reasons. Nerfing Maritime increases the value of their UA, accelerated Culture acquisition from city-states will become stronger, and the additional Culture bonus from Wats arrives at just the right time under the proposed rule set. You're correct that they are likely to become a monster.

I disagree that you would only ever want scientists, because a merchant or artist specialist will earn you that great person 50% faster than a scientist specialist. And then you could still use them for golden ages, where they're all equally effective. Though I would still rather see a buff to the great person building yields (especially at higher tech levels) and the unique abilities of the merchant and artist.

I have a hard time seeing a non-Persian player generating early specialists to produce Golden Ages. Late buildings are so strong (as compared to those in the mid-game) that it's hard to justify producing Great People for purposes other than accelerating the acquisition of those buildings. Some Wonders are very worthwhile, but (as in Civ 4) it's hard to justify the glacial pace of GE production as compared to GS production at the same point in the tech tree, especially when a Maritime-fueled capital can bang out Wonders at a reasonable clip.

The really frustrating thing about a nerf to Scientist GPP output is that the action just strengthens Babylon further. Marketing at Firaxis and 2KGames might appreciate that, but I don't see how it contributes to balance.

The "right" move here is to directly address the balance problems. Limit the amount of Science a Great Scientist can contribute to a tech. Remove the instant heal promotion. Buff Piety, Patronage and Commerce so that we are encouraged to spend SPs rather than save them. Fix the Freedom calculation bug. Nerf Secularism.