"Fall Patch" announced

[ShinQuickMan]

-Ballistics now requires Railroads. This will force the AI to get railroads before getting too deep in the tree.

...


-Drop Gatling Guns to 30 Combat and Ranged Strength.

A painful, but necessary change. Gatling Guns having the highest combat strength (both melee and ranged) of land units for their era made them far too useful in both offense and defense. And those extra tech requirements towards ballistics gives the earliest jump towards Machine Guns and, more importantly, the Information Era, an additional 15-30 turns.

 

[Tabarnak]

I'm curious about what exactly this is going to mean. Will fewer civs beeline some of the earliest wonders like Great Library? Or are they tightening up previously ignored wonders like Oracle?

Me too. Nice patch if the AI can really hurt us more when warring(pillage included!)

 

[Selous]

Added "Restart Game" option to game menu. This option lets you restart the game and generate a new map using your current pregame settings. It's only available at Turn 0.

thank you, love it, along with everything else

 

[OmniPotent42]

@ Tabarnak
Your avatar is just...just....nice.

 

[Loucypher]

This is a painful nerf to the Dutch. The Sea Beggar was king of the seas - in removing its 100% capture rate, the Dutch Armada won't be as feared anymore.
Ottomans look most affected by all these changes, both positive (pillaging) and negative (stealing ships, jannisary).

 

[Jerman]

Balance Changes? They just made the Austrian UA Useless.

 

[OmniPotent42]

Balance Changes? They just made the Austrian UA Useless.

No, they just made it so it's fun for everyone else in the game that Austria is in.

 

[ense7en]

Wow nice, this looks like a fantastic patch!

 

[PhilBowles]

Wow nice, this looks like a fantastic patch!

Fixes most things people would have liked looked at. I would have liked minor changes to iron though - reveal it at Bronze Working (it's the only strategic resource in the game that isn't, or can't be, revealed before the first units that need it become available, beyond which it's just conceptually odd that you can learn how to work the stuff before you've even learned how to recognise it), and require it for cannon.

 

[Yabby69]

Great news. Many annoyances fixed, too bad there's nothing about the "city center yield not added" bug regarding cities acquired in peace deals.

+1 thanks for raising this issue again.

Good patch by the sounds of things but very disappointed that the "city center yield not added" bug is still being ignored (it was reported by me along with several others more than 6 months and at least two prior patches ago in the known bugs forum)

 

[AxelRhodd]

So far the pillaging issue is getting most of the attention here and I want to add another aspect to it:

AI choosing to pillage may give the human player extra 1-2 turns to rush build defensive units in the attacked city or move extra units from other parts of the map to assist in defense.

This was the case in CIV where on occasion I would be able to save my cities thanks to the slight delay in AI advancement.

This means that improving tiles in outermost city rings becomes a strategic decision also...

It all depends on AI prioritizing pillaging over city attack though

 

[pensivepeppers]

Balance Changes? They just made the Austrian UA Useless.

no, Austria was a crazy runaway when it got the gold to buy at least one CS, hopefully now it will be more fun to play as and against

Personally, it seems like a pretty big improvement and I'm glad!

 

[Rooftrellen]

no, Austria was a crazy runaway when it got the gold to buy at least one CS, hopefully now it will be more fun to play as and against

Personally, it seems like a pretty big improvement and I'm glad!

Austria will be a bit weaker now, but just a bit. More than anything this simply added a counter to her buying off CS royalty with a cute girl or handsome guy and a wedding gown. I think it was more a response to the coup change than it was to Austria being too strong.

However, she will be MORE disruptive. After the patch, she will have the ability to remove CS's from the game, like before, but also luxuries. With porcelain and jewelry going away when a major civ takes the CS, and Austria's ability to make a CS a part of their empire, from which they may never be liberated, any lux under a mercantile CS will disappear forever once she grabs them.

 

[Tavenier]

Am so glad about the regenerate map thing. So happy!
Love to see how all the other things will work out.

 

[Selous]

However, she will be MORE disruptive. After the patch, she will have the ability to remove CS's from the game, like before, but also luxuries. With porcelain and jewelry going away when a major civ takes the CS, and Austria's ability to make a CS a part of their empire, from which they may never be liberated, any lux under a mercantile CS will disappear forever once she grabs them.

Mercantile CS now only get a unique luxury for their first city (and not the cities they conquer). Unique luxury is removed upon capture (players can no longer get it by taking over a CS). Unique luxury is given back upon liberation

cant you just liberate the CS? or am i missing something?

loving the new patch, cant wait for it to be released

 

[JanghanHong]

cant you just liberate the CS? or am i missing something?

loving the new patch, cant wait for it to be released

Austrian Marriages ARE FOREVER.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

• research agreement code was previously giving double-credit to research "overflows" (i.e. When you finished a tech and the extra research was being applied to the following tech). Now the credit toward a ra will be based on science earned that turn.

I noticed that one

• fix advanced promotions for melee naval ships.

What are these?

• restore missing cover 2 promotion entries so it is available to units again.

Good, I was feeling the loss during long sieges.

• interception promotions now help the right unit (had previously been reversed).
• evasion promotion helps the right unit (had previously been reversed).

[*]two top-of-screen messages added to explain what is going on with intercepts (one for if the attacking air unit is eliminated, and another if he is just damaged).
[/list]

Well good, but I've never had a lot of air combat anyway. Seems like the AI gives up on it if you get the upper hand

• pillaging tiles now awards +25 hit points to the pillaging unit.

I never did much sending of mounted units behind the lines because cities would just bombard them repeatedly and I'd lose the unit just to pillage a tile or two. Now they'll be somewhat self sustaining by doing that. New strategy!

• austrian ua balance changes:
  • increase the cost of a city-state by at least the amount of gold you will get from scrapping their units.

• 
  If Austria is still overpowered they could include the sale price of buildings. Although you're less likely to scrap buildings.
  

  • "yoink!" achievement is now: "as austria, acquire a city-state with 15 or more units through diplomatic marriage."

  I have sever seen a city state with that many units.
  

  • tall/wide religion balance change: Add grand temple (national wonder).

  But what does it do exactly? Flat increase or population based?
  

  • new peace deals. Now 9 ai levels instead of the previous 5 (so one new level added between each of the earlier ones). Peace levels are now:
    • 0: White Peace (give up nothing)
    • 1: Armistice (1/2 gold, 1/2 of max GPT)
    • 2: Settlement (all gold, max GPT)
    • 3: Back-down (all luxuries, all gold, max GPT, open borders)
    • 4: Submission (all resources, all gold, max GPT, open borders)
    • 5: Surrender (one city)
    • 6: Cession (1/4 city value, 1/2 gold)
    • 7: Capitulation (1/3 city value, all gold)
    • 8: Unconditional Surrender (all but capital, all gold)
  • peace deal code now prioritizes both cities that are close to winner's capital and cities that were originally built by winning player (previously it was distance only).

  Good. I've tried to take cities and then give them back as part of a peace deal but it never worked that way. Maybe now it will although before the problem was more that they didn't seem to realize they weren't winning so I was never going to give up several cities when I could hold them off indefinitely.
  

  • added ability to liberate cities that are not owned by their founders or originally owned by the player. The player will receive a diplomacy bonus with the liberated player for liberating up to three cities. This liberation is not part of the "recalled to life" resurrection of a once annihilated civ. This functionality only runs if the city liberated is owned by a player that is alive. There are two ways to lose the diplomatic liberation bonus are:
    1. declare war on someone you have liberated cities for. You have to be the first player declaring war. This does not count defensive pacts or someone you liberated declaring war on you.
    2. capturing a city from someone you liberated. This case comes into play if a liberated a city of c's, then a & b have a defensive pact, c declares war on a & b, then a captures a city of c's. C will forget that a liberated any of their cities.
  • the ai will now liberate cities and resurrect players. There are notifications when the ai resurrects players and cities. An ai will resurrect another (non-human) player when they are trying to win a diplomatic victory. An ai will return a city if the original owner of the city has a defensive pact with the player and they are both at war with the previous owner of the city, or, the ai and the original owner have a declaration of friendship and the ai is going for a diplomatic victory.

  This will make the AI seem more alive and active.
  

  • with making deals, ais will notify you when they're not willing to give enough on their side to make the deal work. This addresses some issues where you ask an ai to propose a deal and they say "we can't make a deal" and then you propose a lop-sided deal and they accept it. They will say "we aren't willing to give you enough to make this a fair trade."

  I think these are the 83 gold and 5 per turn deals I keep making after they refuse.
  

  • "we attacked your protected city-state" statements are now triggered by damage done (ex. Killing a unit) rather than simply being at war. As a result, the statement should no longer be triggered by a quick succession of dows (such as those done automatically by a cs changing allies).

  Yeah I was sick of having to pick sides just because someone shook there fist in anger at a CS but did nothing real.
  

  • carriers now get naval melee promotions instead of naval ranged.

  Good, although the vs. cities ones are still useless for them. Unless they help with defense against the cities ranged attack. I've wondered if the land melee units vs. city bonus worked on defense too, but I don't think it does.
  

  • prize ships balance change: 50% chance of converting ships with equal intrinsic combat strengths. Scales up and down (between 28% and 80%) based on relative intrinsic combat strengths of the two ships. Conversion chance if you do sink the opponent is shown in blue text on combat preview window.

  I've won battleships with privateers before I could build them myself but I guess that's over now. This is probably so the Ottomans can't just double their navy after one war.
  

  • ai attackers will now pillage.

  With this and the healing thing I'll now build improvements on the side of the city away from the boarder first.
  

  • promotion balance change: Make the +200% vs. Cities promotion go away on upgrade.

  I was holding off playing as Korea because of this.
  

  • tactical ai improvement: Spend more gold on defense. Ai will now spend gold at their cities where tactical dominance is even (before it had to be enemy-dominated). Ai will now also spend money on naval and air units for defense in such cites (before it was only land units and defensive buildings).

  Maybe I'll see those air wars I've wanted now.
  

  • make the default preferred spacing further for players not going for extreme expansion.

  I saw some pretty tightly packed cities in India in my last game.
  

  • more aggressive offshore expansion.

  In my last game going for a tall empire I saw large unsettled islands and wished I wasn't already comited to tall because the AI was just leaving me so much I would take but can't.
  

  • do not give priority to bonus resources in rings 4 and 5 when deciding next tile to grow towards.

  That had irritated me when it worked so hard to get to a sheep I can't use.
  

  • ai will now consider annexing cities it has conquered.

  Maybe now I won't see empires who've lost there capital and now have their capital in a puppet city.
  
  

  +25 on pillage, I think, was trialled in the Fall of Rome scenario (one of the UAs). Apparently they liked it. Yes, it's a bit odd, and I do like the implications for Denmark - not too strong since it is still most effective when they disembark and so limited to the same coastal applications as their UA generally is (and coastal sites already have to worry about Denmark if Harald's a player rather than an AI) to get any benefit over everyone else.

  I like to imagine the vikings stealing beer and large turkey legs from villages as they burn it down.
  
  

  Thanks. What is the cap these days - 0% how many tiles away?
  
  Also, someone is going to have to explain to me exactly how the Austrian UA fix will fix anything o.o

  This guy does it pretty well:
  

  The real nerf to Austria is the fact that they have to be allied for 5 full turns before annexing, which has many consequences: you can't steal CS from other players without giving them the chance to ripost, for example. And it also means that you have to build up some "extra influence", (65 influence, instead of 60), which can be expensive if your only source of influence is money, because of the way buying influence works (fixed amounts of influence per lump sums).

 

[Jerman]

Ok I never experienced that. Its annoying (just look at Japans UA you dont see anyone B****ing at that) Also America is so under powered.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

This is a painful nerf to the Dutch. The Sea Beggar was king of the seas - in removing its 100% capture rate, the Dutch Armada won't be as feared anymore.

I don't see how this relates specifically to the Dutch. The Sea Begger gets an extra coastal raider and supply promotion. They were no better at capturing ships than standard privateers.

 

[Tavenier]

What do they mean with that RA overflow? I dont get it.