Fall Patch changes discussion thread

[lockstep]

I like the additional Tourism benefits, especially the reduced unrest time and population loss. Makes selective mid-game conquest more rewarding!

 

[Smokeybear]

Changed MINIMUM_SETTLE_FERTILITY to 20000, up from 5000 to keep AI civs from settling worthless plots. Added some logging code to track plot values.

YESSSS!!! Lot of good stuff (some incredibly long overdue...), but that one made me cheer the loudest.

 

[Matthew.]

You actually do sacrifice bombers. Since, until airports, you can only have six air units per city, and ten with airports, building a zero means that you lose a slot that could have been used for a bomber.

The same choice any Civ makes, has nothing to do with Japan. Given more air slots than oil, Japan has the advantage in that they don't need to sacrifice bombers to have any fighter support.

If you are in a situation where your oil exceeds air slots and you choose to go with all bombers, it doesn't matter how awesome Zeros could/would/should be, you weren't going to use them anyway.

 

[El Caballerion]

I wish Workers could do the Samurai thing with Fishing Boats It would make costal starts so much less annoying

Yes. Japan should be able to embark automatically (on coast only) and its workers should be able to build fishing boats without need to build a fishing boat.

OR

Japan fishing boats should be half production cost.

 

[notyourtypical]

The change to Japan, while I haven't tried it out yet, seems laughably minor. I remember them saying that the change would reflect Japan's isolationist culture, while they may be able to earn a little bit more culture than usual, I really don't see the association. Now, Japan is the civ which would have benefited from a UU change. Even with the changes to flight, and it not requiring oil I don't see the Zero being taken seriously. In fact, I see it being taken less seriously. So it doesn't require Oil, but who wants to waste the now limited space for a fighter when you could have a bomber?

The changes absolutely make Japan more isolationist, you've just missed the changes that do it. It's the Zero requiring no oil coupled with the stack limit on air units. If AI Oda or a human puts a stack of Zeros in a city, an attacker is effectively unable to use their bombers. You'll need at least 7 or 8 fighters to air sweep. Japan becomes a harder nut to crack after flight as you're limited to a ground war.

Incidentally, the stacking limit also increases the value of AA guns. Why set fighters on intercept and lose a bomber?

 

[benjamin28]

I agree that Japan changes are too situational and somewhat bizarre (really? Mighty armored warriors building... fishing boats?), but what really matters is...

Great Works of Writing (like the Rosetta Stone) now available from 30% of the Hidden Antiquity Sites. An alternative use of these is to create a "Cultural Renaissance" (equal to a Great Writer's Political Treatise).

Yaaayy!! That sounds very useful, varied and flavorful! I totally expect the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Popol Vuh, the Genesis Book and so many others.
Archaeology is already fun. With these changes it will be better than ever!

 

[Green_Power]

My personal favorite:

Deal History tab on the diplomacy screen now shows more relevant information.

Tourism: Further Benefits from Tourism when Influential with another Civ

Congress: Made Diplo Victory more difficult by increasing the delegates needed to win (2 more on Duel, 7 more on Standard, 9 more on Huge). Also exposed delegate equation values to XML for future tweaking and ambitious modders.

Air Combat - New stacking limits on air units in cities. Starts at 6; increased to 10 when you add an Airport. Game Concept text updated to match this change.

Military AI: Civs with very high FLAVOR_OFFENSE settings (7+) will buy military units with spare gold more frequently. Will boost the number of early attacks we see, especially on high difficulties.

Changed MINIMUM_SETTLE_FERTILITY to 20000, up from 5000 to keep AI civs from settling worthless plots. Added some logging code to track plot values.

Will start a beta game today!

 

[El Caballerion]

Can Mac users participate in the Beta?

 

[Cyanfunk]

The samurai fishing boats thing is probably a reference to Miyamoto Musashi.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

They finally made notifications appear correctly in hotseat, such an irrelevant thing made me super happy, but I still am hoping for denoucements!

 

[fyar]

Maybe my favorite change is the added benefits to tourism. The trade route beakers are pretty much negligible (even 4 when the next tech needs thousands of beakers is miniscule), but the diplomat/spy surveillance boosts as well as the unrest reduction are VERY cool ideas.

Second favorite change was the archaeology stuff. A buff to Exploration and its finisher, obviously, but also the diplomatic benefits to creating a landmark for other civs or city-states is nice.

Third would be not having the AI build crap cities in the north pole just to get a solitary fish.

Obviously the stacking limit to air units was needed. I think it should've been even lower (like 3, 6 with an airport), but then maybe have Forts also function as Airbases after Radar.

I'm also glad that they fixed the scaling for musicians, writers, and scientists. I liked playing on epic, but I was disinclined to do so because of the comparatively weak scientists.

The social policy tweaks were all very nice, but unfortunately they were still just tweaks, when what was needed was a larger scale fix to make the other policy trees comparable to the Tradition-Consulates-Rationalism play.

I think the added culture for Japan helps to make them more isolationist... it's more tourism defense. Unfortunately I think they'll still be well below average.

I agree with making diplomatic victory more difficult, but merely increasing the arbitrary vote threshold just seems lazy, and still doesn't make it any more fun. I would've liked the idea that someone else had, where the United Nations is a world project like the World's Fair, and it has to pass and be completed before votes could take place. Maybe have certain resolutions that can only be proposed through the UN (not the World Congress) so that you might have a reason to vote to form the UN even if you aren't going for a diplo victory.

 

[Glassmage]

samurai build fishing boats? ...... other than that solid patch!

 

[Haig]

Landsknechts pillage without movement cost and get double the gold when capturing a city.
They can also move immediately after purchase.

Really cool '30 years war raping Europe 1618ad' vibe.

They need the Mercenary Army social policy from Commerce branch to be activated (and civil service tech)

 

[Alziel]

I think I can see one of the intentions with Japan's changes which I haven't seen mentioned yet.

If you conquer and puppet an enemy city miles away when it is on the coast and has pillaged or non-improved sea resources you can just use your conquering army (assuming it includes Samurai) to get the resources improved almost instantly. Otherwise you have to ship a workboat over there or annexe the city instead.

 

[Mudrac]

This may sound like a dumb question. But is the patch live or is this just the preview of the changes?

 

[Ninakoru]

No balance changes on Tradition, Rationalism or Consulates is a bit disappointing.

Totally agree. There's a still near-always best option in the policy department with little room for customization on higher difficulty levels. Full tradition -> consulates -> secularism is again the safest bet.

And yes, a nerf is what I ask for. Policies shouldn't be so important to gameplay, tradition alone will mark the rest of the game tremendously. It kills all the policy customization initial purpose.

Piety need a small boost in culture culture and maybe some happiness. Honor is plain horrible, need some actual early army support instead of miscellaneous crap. Still a nerfed vanilla-oriented policy tree.

I'm quite disapointed, the boost to GG generation.. seriously???

 

[Carl5872]

I love the patch overall, but one of the funny things was the Great Admiral "improvement". Now you can take your worthless GP and... move him around faster!!!

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Changed MINIMUM_SETTLE_FERTILITY to 20000, up from 5000 to keep AI civs from settling worthless plots. Added some logging code to track plot values.

YESSSS!!! Lot of good stuff (some incredibly long overdue...), but that one made me cheer the loudest.

oddly enough, me too. i even came into post about it but you already have it covered, haha. the annoying valueless cities are a real pain and this fix really stood out to me. im curious as to how it will actually play out.

edit: also no adjustments to Sacred Sites that I saw. emperor and under can still get a CV pre-t200.

 

[dshirk]

This may sound like a dumb question. But is the patch live or is this just the preview of the changes?

It's available now for testing. Check out the sticky at the top of the forum.

 

[fyar]

I love the patch overall, but one of the funny things was the Great Admiral "improvement". Now you can take your worthless GP and... move him around faster!!!

I think the main purpose of that modification is to fix the really annoying situation where you finally get a Great Admiral, and he spawns... in a city by some lake. In that case, he really WAS worthless. Now, at least you can move him to some other cities, and have a slightly less worthless great person.