Fall Patch changes discussion thread

[fyar]

My question about Commerce is this: will Mercenary Army still be useful if you don't get it right away? Commerce is usually a tertiary tree for me, at best. But if I want to get Protectionism some time in the Industrial Era, will Mercenary Army be a complete waste of a policy? Or will I be able to do something else with those Landsknecht?

Even if you can upgrade them into lancers / anti-tanks / helicopters, I probably would never use this policy post-Renaissance. Especially if the upgrade cost is the same as Germany's was. The upgrade cost is related to the difference in hammer cost between the old and the new units, but Landsknecht cost so few hammers that the cost to upgrade them into lancers was even more than it was to upgrade pikemen, hardly any cheaper than buying a brand new lancer, which most players never do anyway. If the upgrade cost is prohibitive and all you get is a crappy lancer / anti-tank / helicopter (not to mention it'd take 3 turns of upgrades to get your helicopter), it seems like this will be a waste of a policy unless you get it as soon as Commerce becomes available. Its only value would be to get to Protectionism.

 

[civ54lyfe]

only thing i'm wondering about re: Commerce Merc Army/LandSnots is the AI... how often do the AI pick Commerce. i'm guessing not often. i rarely see Big Ben built, maybe Venice AI picks this a lot?

 

[Viregel]

Am I missing something or is Hanse flat 50% production bonus if you get both Petra and Colossus(and 40% even without)? Of course you would lose the benefits of trading with other civs, but still that seems quite high.

Yes, but it's unlikely that you're going to be able to have all these trade routes unless you focus on them. However, it's definitely a really cool building.

Also, my opinion on balancing the current civs (as it seems this is the right place for it):
Portugal: Not really tried them out, but I feel like the UA isn't doing a lot for them. Can anyone please tell me what they think of it?
France: +2 culture per city should be fine to re-add.
Indonesia: Just remove the continents requirement, and that should be fine.
Morocco: Up the Kasbah yields slightly, and also up the UA to give something like +4 gold and +3 culture per trade route with a different civ.
Shoshone: Comanche Riders need to be improved. Perhaps gold from each enemy killed? (Not sure how related it is to the Comanche, but it said something like that on the Civ5 Civilizations/Leaders wanted thread, so I'm coming from there)

Please tell me this is the right place to post. If not, feel free to redirect me!

 

[Tibbz]

I like all the changes at 1st glance except the limit of 6 planes stationed per city.

This change will make it non-viable to field a decently sized air-force until you get stealth bomber tech.

Atomic bombs / Nuclear Missiles already served to deter people just mindlessly stacking all their aircraft. This 6 plane cap just seems very anti-quality of life and removes a lot of the mid-lategame air play that I have come to enjoy.

 

[Montov]

Great patch. Love the additions and tweaks.

One issue with these changes is how it keeps adding bonuses to the Airport. It is already such a vital/central building, and now it also gives 4 additional plane spots, although it is appropriate.
I would recommend giving Airport 2 additional spots, and Military Base 2 additional spots.

2 balancing issues I have left:

* Consulates + Pledge = perma friends with every City State.
Simplest solution: Pledge only increases resting point by 5 (small reward because it also has a small risk).
If perma friends is an intended design choice, then there are a couple of tweaks to improve it:
Switch Consulates and the policy below it, making it 3 policies further,
or give an increase of 5 resting point to pledge, road & trade route, so you would need at least 2 of those 3 (and Consulates) to become easy friends.

* City bombard strength Tradition & Pantheon.
The policy in Tradition gives 50% increase in city bombardment, and there is a pantheon with a 30% bonus. This needs to swap. Everyone can choose the policy (and will because of the strength of Tradition), but the pantheon is 'special', has a bigger opportunity cost and needs spreading to get the bonus. The pantheon should have the bigger bonus, and no one would complain about Tradition have a very slight nerf.

 

[brindle]

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.

Yes, nail on head, especially for MP games. Although I see just as many end with GS pop rush to XCOM and game over. Usually, literally within 15 turns of Research Labs being researched by whoever gets there first the game is over. Hubble space telescope exasperates the problem. So in most game you see someone go in one turn through Modern and into information bulbing stored GS, (direct to space hubble, pop great engineer), next turn, use those new GS pop to xcom. game over. Generally speaking, you seldom see any modern or information age units other then xcom and the occasional nuke.

 

[Mudrac]

Re: Samurai

A Samurai should be able to earn the promotion Great Samurai which allows the player to change the unit into a General, an Admiral, an Artist or a Writer.

Pretty neat idea. Although I had some additional ideas for Japan as well:

UA:Bushido
Japan has a specific technology called Bushido which replaces Chivalry. Along with all the things Chivalry has it also gives all units Bushido Promotion and allows you to build Shogun's Castle. Fishing Boats provide +1 culture and atolls +2 culture.

UU:Samurai
Can build Fishing Boats. Has the same Combat Strength as Musketman and cannot upgrade to him. Becomes obsolete with Industrialization. Once you research Industrialization Samurai can become following Great Persons: Great Writer, Great Artist, Great Musician, Great Merchant or Great Engineer. But can do so only once. (Same as the Mayan UA, which means you must have 5 Samurai to get each Great Person).

UB:Shogun's Castle
Unique Japanese National Wonder. Requires Bushido technology to be build, as well to have built a Castle in every city. It can only be built in Capital City. It provides +15% Combat Strength to Capital, as well as +10% Combat Strength for units fighting in Friendly territory. It also provides +2 culture, +2 happiness and has 1 Free Slot for Great Work of Art or Artifact.

Just the ideas, doubt they will be implemented.

 

[Montov]

I like all the changes at 1st glance except the limit of 6 planes stationed per city.

This change will make it non-viable to field a decently sized air-force until you get stealth bomber tech.

Atomic bombs / Nuclear Missiles already served to deter people just mindlessly stacking all their aircraft. This 6 plane cap just seems very anti-quality of life and removes a lot of the mid-lategame air play that I have come to enjoy.

I really like the change. With 1 unit per tile, a stack of air-doom breaks the balance.
Having 2 Fighters and 4 Bombers in a city is still very powerful, and planes in other cities likely have some range on the frontline as well. It's just that the 2 dozen bomber tactic isn't possible anymore, meaning in some situation you need to stay active on the ground/naval.

 

[Txurce]

It's too bad there's no existing code for this, but...

It would be cool to have some sort of promotion which grants some culture upon death.

This way, samurais could gain the promotion, fight to the death (since they always fight as if they had full health anyway) and then reward the player.

This would also compliment the Zeros as well, and the promotion could be called Kamikaze! Honorable deaths for Japan.

Another approach, which again, there isn't any existing code (especially AI code) to handle it would be to allow samurais the ability to "expend" themselves and disappear to grant the player a small, lump sum of culture, just like great writers. This ability could be called seppuku.

This is a truly inspired idea that also fits the cultural notion the patch is stressing.

 

[Johnpecan]

Overall, some fun and potentially good changes. I like the synergy between tourism breakpoints and spy effectiveness.

But wow, Consulates gets an indirect buff. Except for an extreme warmonger game, it's hard to imagine another time where it's not going to be worth it to pick up consulates every game.

 

[MadDjinn]

I obviously need to test it out more, but I'd argue Hanse needs to be that high just to compete. It is a late-game building, so needs to compensate for not getting anything until then.

It also needs to be a bit higher due to the fact that you're giving up more gold, science and tourism by not sending those trade routes to other civs.

 

[Uncle_Joe]

Meh. A lot of nice little tweaks but the basic problem I see with BNW still looks to be there.

Basically it's still too easy/rewarding to go with 4 mega-cities, stay peaceful, and tech up to an easy win. And it's still way too easy to make ridiculous amount of money off of trade to buy up many/most of the CSs and use them for happiness for the megacities and science via the policies.

Again, I just played a game where I did that with a whopping FOUR military units the whole game (periodically upgraded, but still by far in last place for Soldiers).

Every game I play can follow a same simple pattern. Develop capital, slowly expand to 4 cities (total), develop trade routes as possible. Build up libraries, universities etc. Get all of the buildings for having an 'x' in every city (also stupidly easy with just 4 megacities). Pass the AIs in everything meaningful (while being rewarded with trade and luxuries and DoFs and RAs). Win.

I had Denmark, India, and Russia close or reasonably close (along with 4 CSs). Also out there were China (the leader for a long time until I went into overdrive and passed them), America (rump state), Shaka (bogged down in countless wars against multiple opponents and got nowhere), Babylon (fought Shaka repeatedly, was doing OK but then stagnated).

The AIs are still far too tolerant of being eclipsed by a TALL civ. And they still actively HELP me when I'm beating them technologically, economically, and diplomatically. All the while with any and all of them possessing the means to annihilate me or AT LEAST force me to spend on defense.

So IMO, the 'Fall Balance Patch', while nice, is just window dressing. The AIs need to react to a player who is going TALL and beating them, not just players who are expanding and/or peeing in their pools.

 

[headcase]

I like all the changes at 1st glance except the limit of 6 planes stationed per city.

This change will make it non-viable to field a decently sized air-force until you get stealth bomber tech.

Atomic bombs / Nuclear Missiles already served to deter people just mindlessly stacking all their aircraft. This 6 plane cap just seems very anti-quality of life and removes a lot of the mid-lategame air play that I have come to enjoy.

Well, they can still be placed on Carriers. Someone had the idea of allowing a stack of a few planes on each fort and citadel, which would be great since forts are underused currently.

 

[Boygor]

Well, they can still be placed on Carriers. Someone had the idea of allowing a stack of a few planes on each fort and citadel, which would be great since forts are underused currently.

I just wish that the fort graphic be updated from era to era

 

[Montov]

It also needs to be a bit higher due to the fact that you're giving up more gold, science and tourism by not sending those trade routes to other civs.

I tend to choose City States as trade partners a lot, because I don't want to supply gold, science and tourism to other civs... I think there is already enough incentive to trade with City States. Which doesn't make the Hanse bad or anything, it does fit my play style, but maybe I was hoping there would be more incentive to trade with another civ.

 

[learner gamer]

Meh. A lot of nice little tweaks but the basic problem I see with BNW still looks to be there.

Basically it's still too easy/rewarding to go with 4 mega-cities, stay peaceful, and tech up to an easy win. And it's still way too easy to make ridiculous amount of money off of trade to buy up many/most of the CSs and use them for happiness for the megacities and science via the policies.

Again, I just played a game where I did that with a whopping FOUR military units the whole game (periodically upgraded, but still by far in last place for Soldiers).

Every game I play can follow a same simple pattern. Develop capital, slowly expand to 4 cities (total), develop trade routes as possible. Build up libraries, universities etc. Get all of the buildings for having an 'x' in every city (also stupidly easy with just 4 megacities). Pass the AIs in everything meaningful (while being rewarded with trade and luxuries and DoFs and RAs). Win.

I had Denmark, India, and Russia close or reasonably close (along with 4 CSs). Also out there were China (the leader for a long time until I went into overdrive and passed them), America (rump state), Shaka (bogged down in countless wars against multiple opponents and got nowhere), Babylon (fought Shaka repeatedly, was doing OK but then stagnated).

The AIs are still far too tolerant of being eclipsed by a TALL civ. And they still actively HELP me when I'm beating them technologically, economically, and diplomatically. All the while with any and all of them possessing the means to annihilate me or AT LEAST force me to spend on defense.

So IMO, the 'Fall Balance Patch', while nice, is just window dressing. The AIs need to react to a player who is going TALL and beating them, not just players who are expanding and/or peeing in their pools.

I'm so glad you said this – these thoughts mirror my own. For all the tweaks that have made the patch (and there are some good ones in there), it seems clear to me that nothing has been done to incentivise the gamer to go wider than 4 or so cities. Indeed, you might argue that the new God-King pantheon does the exact opposite by boosting the Palace, the role of which increases in importance in narrow / tall civs. In short, it seems completely clear to me that Firaxis are designing Civ 5 to appeal primarily to gamers who enjoy playing narrow / tall. Back to EU 4, I guess.

 

[Gort]

Since when is 6 aircraft per city not a "decently sized air-force"? And how does getting stealth bomber tech increase the number of planes you have? I get the feeling you haven't read something somewhere.

 

[civ54lyfe]

^yeah i was thinking the same. like if you want limitless aircraft/city you're doing pretty dang well already. boohoo if you're forced to fill the rest out with land units.

 

[neilkaz]

Since when is 6 aircraft per city not a "decently sized air-force"? And how does getting stealth bomber tech increase the number of planes you have? I get the feeling you haven't read something somewhere.

Stealth Bombers have great range so that they can reach the enemy's cities from further away thereby making the limit of 6 less detrimental to those who want to be able to attack with many planes.

 

[redwings1340]

I like all the changes at 1st glance except the limit of 6 planes stationed per city.

This change will make it non-viable to field a decently sized air-force until you get stealth bomber tech.

Atomic bombs / Nuclear Missiles already served to deter people just mindlessly stacking all their aircraft. This 6 plane cap just seems very anti-quality of life and removes a lot of the mid-lategame air play that I have come to enjoy.

I really like this change. Planes are still very powerful, but this will either force you to get carriers or use your planes as a supporting role, and force you to get a more balanced military. If I have 6 bombers in a city and they're attacking me with a massive ground force, I only need a minimal ground defensive force to keep the city. Planes are hopefully still powerful, but not the only thing you'll ever need to kill off other civs.

With the airport stacks of doom are still very easy to come by later.