Germany's UA is still crap because barb camps only appear in the very early game. Not that I want them to appear later on. I've never gotten more than 2 warriors out of the barb conversion, and warriors are crap. With 67% conversion chance maybe occasionally I'll get a third. I just want Germany to have a UA that stays useful throughout the game and is more interesting than -25% land maintenance.
Fall Patch changes discussion thread
- Thread starter Tinker
- Start date
Mudrac
Orc Warchief
*shrug*
-25% is still better than many of the other UA's.
And you need to learn how to abuse them. Barb camps will reappear almost instantly as long as they have fog of war, so after clearing a camp retreat your units so the fog of war reappears. Later camps will have better units than warriors.
Yeah, clearing out the camps near your area and keeping the fog clear, you won't get much use out of the conversion part of the UA.
-25% is still better than many of the other UA's.
And you need to learn how to abuse them. Barb camps will reappear almost instantly as long as they have fog of war, so after clearing a camp retreat your units so the fog of war reappears. Later camps will have better units than warriors.
Yeah, clearing out the camps near your area and keeping the fog clear, you won't get much use out of the conversion part of the UA.
Germany's UA is widely considered one of the weakest among good players, but I'm glad for you that you know better.
Mudrac
Orc Warchief
Germany's UA, just like UA of many other civs is more useful and more powerful on larger maps. For example, just recently I played with Rome on Continents, Large. Even in the late game there were barb encampments that had Tanks, Infantry and so on. So imagine that I had Germany's UA I would get those units for free. And -25% land maintenance, may not be as good as Zulu's -50%, but it still is relatively good. For example you have 10 units that cost 4 maintenance, overall 40 GPT, -25% that's 30 GPT per turn, so 10 more GPT for you. And now Germany's got the Hanse as well. Somewhere by the late Renaissance I think you can have 4-5 trade routes. Built Hanse in cities and you get +25% production boost. That isn't a small production buff especially in Renaissance Era. So both with it's UA and UB Germany has become both a very strong military and production civ, whereas before it was just a military civ.
It has always been relatively decent, not ridiculously strong, just decent. It is just the bandwagon effect where people group up to trash on something. For example, India was the target before. BNW hasn't really done much to improve that Civ, yet the bandwagon has moved on to Germany/Japan because of fall patch.
I can think of at least 10 other UA's that are worse than Germany's -25%. Just the reduced maintenance. That isn't even considering the conversion part. It is not ridiculously powerful, bit it isn't bottom-of-barrel either.
I like to compare them to China, because they play roughly the same. The gold bonus comes out to be about the same between the two, but China has always pulled ahead because +15% combat and Chu's are way better than Landknechts. Now with the Hanse, it becomes more competitive. China has the combat bonus, but Germany has the production bonus. The main difference now is Germany's power sits in the end-game, so on smaller maps you won't get to experience it much.
I can think of at least 10 other UA's that are worse than Germany's -25%. Just the reduced maintenance. That isn't even considering the conversion part. It is not ridiculously powerful, bit it isn't bottom-of-barrel either.
I like to compare them to China, because they play roughly the same. The gold bonus comes out to be about the same between the two, but China has always pulled ahead because +15% combat and Chu's are way better than Landknechts. Now with the Hanse, it becomes more competitive. China has the combat bonus, but Germany has the production bonus. The main difference now is Germany's power sits in the end-game, so on smaller maps you won't get to experience it much.
isau
Deity
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2007
- Messages
- 3,071
I've now played a game (as Sweden) with the changes.
One thing that stands out immediately is that I have way more gold in the early game. The AI was paying 7 gold per luxury instead of 5. Trade Routes seem to provide more money.
But the biggest change is the bug fix that (finally!) lets the AI contact the player with offers for trade. Because other AIs were coming to me to ask for trades instead of me having to hunt them down, it made maximizing the use of any left over resources much easier. I'm not sure if this is going to improve expert player's performance aside from the convenience, but for inexperienced players it will be a huge boon.
Given all the extra early gold, it seems both Piety and Honor are slightly better. Fielding an early army is much more viable. However, Tradition remains so much better than either that it seems a waste to take either path. Consulates, as noted by others, is still incredibly overpowered.
I am still unsure about some of the flavor changes to AI. At one point in an Emperor game I took Byzantines capital with crossbows. She had 2 Dromons, 1 warrior and 1 composite bow in her empire. Maybe I just got lucky. Or maybe peacfeful-ish AIs are a bit dippy now. Too early to tell.
Given the buff to Japan some additional sea resources would be an excellent addition to the game. It's very common on many of the Firaxis created maps to have miles of coastline with no sea resources. Perhaps a solution to this that would not unbalance the game would be to allow Gold, Silver, Copper, Gems, Stone, Aluminum, Uranium, Marble and Iron to sometimes appear in the water but require a fishing boat to build, just like Oil does.
I think Germany should have a 100% chance to get whatever effect it gets from barbarian camps. Enough with the random rolls. A 67% chance means to succeed per capture means if the player encounters a fairly average number of 3 barbarian camps early there is a 3% chance to get nothing at all. How much fun is rolling a die, 3% chance you get no UA? Rather than a strategy it sounds like incentive to restart if you get screwed by the dice.
One thing that stands out immediately is that I have way more gold in the early game. The AI was paying 7 gold per luxury instead of 5. Trade Routes seem to provide more money.
But the biggest change is the bug fix that (finally!) lets the AI contact the player with offers for trade. Because other AIs were coming to me to ask for trades instead of me having to hunt them down, it made maximizing the use of any left over resources much easier. I'm not sure if this is going to improve expert player's performance aside from the convenience, but for inexperienced players it will be a huge boon.
Given all the extra early gold, it seems both Piety and Honor are slightly better. Fielding an early army is much more viable. However, Tradition remains so much better than either that it seems a waste to take either path. Consulates, as noted by others, is still incredibly overpowered.
I am still unsure about some of the flavor changes to AI. At one point in an Emperor game I took Byzantines capital with crossbows. She had 2 Dromons, 1 warrior and 1 composite bow in her empire. Maybe I just got lucky. Or maybe peacfeful-ish AIs are a bit dippy now. Too early to tell.
Given the buff to Japan some additional sea resources would be an excellent addition to the game. It's very common on many of the Firaxis created maps to have miles of coastline with no sea resources. Perhaps a solution to this that would not unbalance the game would be to allow Gold, Silver, Copper, Gems, Stone, Aluminum, Uranium, Marble and Iron to sometimes appear in the water but require a fishing boat to build, just like Oil does.
I think Germany should have a 100% chance to get whatever effect it gets from barbarian camps. Enough with the random rolls. A 67% chance means to succeed per capture means if the player encounters a fairly average number of 3 barbarian camps early there is a 3% chance to get nothing at all. How much fun is rolling a die, 3% chance you get no UA? Rather than a strategy it sounds like incentive to restart if you get screwed by the dice.
Mudrac
Orc Warchief
Yeah, why didn't they change India a little bit as well? Also what I would have liked to see is that some other civs with not so strong UA get certain bonuses on Great Works, because France is currently the only civ that gets Great Works bonuses.
Something that hasn't seen much discussion yet is the new role of Landschnects. Being available to all civs and being almost as cheap as a warrior to purchase, they seem like they'd be incredibly handy for the quick conquest of a neighbour. In my last game I went for a Tradition/Commerce hybrid, rushing Civil Service and timing the Oracle to get Mercenary Army as soon as I enter the medieval age. Had a pretty lucrative start, so after trade routes and the Commerce bonus I was earning about 75 gpt, which on Standard is basically a Landschnect every 3 turns. I had about 700 gold saved up for this gambit, so even with only a Composite Bowman or two, I was immediately in a good position to overwhelm my neighbour Persia.
I wasn't even aiming for a domination victory, but I imagine an optimised build with something like China (Paper Makers and GGs) or Venice (drowning in Gold) would possibly be quite overpowered, if you made the best use of Landschnects.
I haven't got far enough to test this yet, but if they promote to Lancers (and depending on whether they obselete like Pikemen) the window could be much larger to execute this strategy.
I wasn't even aiming for a domination victory, but I imagine an optimised build with something like China (Paper Makers and GGs) or Venice (drowning in Gold) would possibly be quite overpowered, if you made the best use of Landschnects.
I haven't got far enough to test this yet, but if they promote to Lancers (and depending on whether they obselete like Pikemen) the window could be much larger to execute this strategy.
Went and tried a game as Germany, I'm liking it so far. The AI values trades a LOT better, though I noticed one weird thing.
Early game, Enrico approaches me for a trade. I swap some numbers about (He offered 6 GPT + Embassy for Crabs) and we end up with a deal of 8 GPT + Embassy vs Crabs + Embassy. Trade fulfills, I want to renew the deal minus the embassies (We signed a DoF in the meantime), and to my surprise, he only wants to go to 7GPT, or 8 if I put in 25 gold.
The Netherlands, who I also had a DoF with, ended up offering the exact same deal. I found this to be rather odd, to say the least. Oh well, at least they value stuff better now, so I shouldn't complain.
One thing that does need fixing is piety-picking civs who don't end up grabbing a religion still building Djenne. It's just stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid STUPID.
Early game, Enrico approaches me for a trade. I swap some numbers about (He offered 6 GPT + Embassy for Crabs) and we end up with a deal of 8 GPT + Embassy vs Crabs + Embassy. Trade fulfills, I want to renew the deal minus the embassies (We signed a DoF in the meantime), and to my surprise, he only wants to go to 7GPT, or 8 if I put in 25 gold.
The Netherlands, who I also had a DoF with, ended up offering the exact same deal. I found this to be rather odd, to say the least. Oh well, at least they value stuff better now, so I shouldn't complain.
One thing that does need fixing is piety-picking civs who don't end up grabbing a religion still building Djenne. It's just stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid STUPID.
Vidszhite
Ya Girl Juniper & Friends
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2012
- Messages
- 370
Germany's UA seems fine to me. I was in a game where I got 3 archers off it, and could potentially have gotten more. Honor felt really good in combination with it. Yes, it's only early game, but when you're playing early game on Deity, it's a huge help, since the barbs basically build your army for you, leaving you time to build settlers/library/improvements without sacrificing anything. Germany can also field more units besides, so they suffer far less from the early game gold crunch. I think they might just compete with the Huns now.
On other topics, the AI settling improvements are simply wonderful. It doesn't just affect late game, it also affects how rapidly the AI expands, and where to. More often than not now, I'm seeing them plop their cities exactly where I would have put them, which means less razing and more puppet/annexing. They don't put cities in spots that don't do anything but wreck your plans anymore. Outstanding improvement.
Also wonderful is that the AI now offers gold for deals without your input, which is a HUGE QoL improvement.
On other topics, the AI settling improvements are simply wonderful. It doesn't just affect late game, it also affects how rapidly the AI expands, and where to. More often than not now, I'm seeing them plop their cities exactly where I would have put them, which means less razing and more puppet/annexing. They don't put cities in spots that don't do anything but wreck your plans anymore. Outstanding improvement.
Also wonderful is that the AI now offers gold for deals without your input, which is a HUGE QoL improvement.
for both civs.
black213
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2010
- Messages
- 1,712
The best way to nerf Rationalism would be to remove it and replace with another tree... Same for Babylon and Korea UAs. Science is important: bonuses to it are too powerful.
This might sound very drastic but I don't see any other effective way of balancing science.
This might sound very drastic but I don't see any other effective way of balancing science.
Stellarnight
Warlord
Early game seems to lag and stutter but it seems to get better as the turns progress.
"Create Fishing Boat" icon is duplicated for Sailing Technology.
Pleasantly surprised when Denmark approached me for a 1-1 lux trade
"Create Fishing Boat" icon is duplicated for Sailing Technology.
Pleasantly surprised when Denmark approached me for a 1-1 lux trade
apocalypse105
Deity
- Joined
- May 17, 2011
- Messages
- 2,705
Warmonger penalty for conquering a city is now halved with other civs that are also at war with the civ being conquered.
Great change
Great change
Luckystrike77
Prince
Yeah. The worst villain is Humanism policy in Rationalism: Great Scientists are earned 25% faster. This policy that can be chosen really early on makes rationalism even more powerfull now after the so called nerf of Rationalism then before the "nerf". All games are about spamming Great Scientists for an instant as possible Space Race Victory. At least this is true for current MP-games. The one who can spam the most usually wins, making all other strategies like for instance growing other great persons like Cultural Great Persons or Science trough huge as possible well developed cities strategy very inferior.
This has always been the case in all versions of Civ5 by the way, and it has in all fairness been even worse in older versions. I hope scaling changes to Great Scientists will help (MP is often played on quick) + increased costs of Space Parts. But anyways, I'd love to see Humanism either being nerfed to 15%+, moved further down the policy tree or preferable totally replaced by something that did not improve GS growth at all (and something less powerfull).
I'd love the end game to last abit longer, so a tech leader has to fear an invasion in modern times, not just rush for the Space Vic in no time with all his saved up GS's, and perhaps in worst case loose a city or two before he completes the Space Ship, even if the whole world allies against him.
Carl5872
Prince
EricTheGreat12
King
For the people that have tried it, how is the new Germany and Japan?
Moderator Action: Moved this post to the discussion of the patch as it does not belong in the Firaxis thread.
Moderator Action: Moved this post to the discussion of the patch as it does not belong in the Firaxis thread.
