Fall patch discussion thread

No more ridiculous than obsessing preemptively about the arbitrary name given to a game patch.

 

Yup. By their very nature, horses are animals adapted to open terrain. I pretty much grew up on horseback and riding through woods at anything above walking pace isn't something you want to do. You'd run all sorts of risks (your horse tripping over tree-roots, the rider getting knocked off the horse by running into branches, etc). I can't even imagine what it would be like to fight on horseback under these conditions. Your advantage of speed and mobility is completely gone in a forest as is your ability to maintain unit cohesion (say, to mount a charge).

Pretty much all cavalry always fought offensively, not defensively. Roman cavalry were only considered auxiliary troops, used mostly for "harassment".
Medieval Knights charged enemy infantry formations to break them up.

I can't think of a cavalry unit whose main purpose was to hold and defend territory. Why would you need a horse on defense anyway? It would only get in the way and/or panic and run away. And a trained cavalry horse isn't something you want to "throw away" - they're expensive to breed and train and their training takes time. The main strength of cavalry is high mobility on the battlefield. Dismounted cavalry are just worse foot-soldiers (since they're trained to fight from horseback, not on their own feet).
And all that can also be applied to the cavalry's successors in modern times (tanks). You don't use tanks to conquer territory, but rather to mount fast attacks and to drive the enemy from their positions. To *hold* whatever territory the tanks charged through, you still need infantry.

So I find the idea that cavalry is now able to fortify not just problematic but plain wrong.

 

It seems that they did not fix the bug that prevents showing the last thing you built in a city. It still shows you the second last thing you built....

 

Yeah, that is an annoying cock up.

 

I'm on mac and so I can't apply the patch yet. Has anyone tested the new balanced maps? How good are those?

 

It's nice they show us when the city grows and where.
But it would really be nice if, when the city grows, it actually grew where it said it was going to grow!
They are giving false information. I ook at a city, it says it's going to grow onto the stone, and when it foes grow, it grows onto the rice.
WTF?

 

"Arbitrary" or "meaningful". The name implies it is not arbitrary. The question remains why they called this a "fall patch".

 

So has the AI learnt to rule the seas yet? Or they still build no navy and leave all units exposed at sea?

 

Moreover, it's essentially just a role-playing modifier. It's not as if as a monarch I should be bothered that another civ is a merchant republic. Rather, I want to leverage my envoy bonuses, which is only advantageous if other players don't have them.

Plus, certain governments are heavily favored over others. Oligarchy eclipses republic and oligarchy. Monarchy is pretty much never stuck with.

 

Well, this new AI is definitely broken in my opinion. So, I'm playing a game on Immortal. Russia is constantly declaring war on me for converting one of their cities to my religion even though he was the one who attacked my Apostle and the resulting loss converted his closest city... this is just absurd! Even worse, it happened over a 1000 YEARS AGO!... and he is still declaring war on me for it.

The next bit is even more ridiculous. Every other Civ starts declaring war on me even though a couple were actually allies just a few turns ago and I've been nothing but nice to them for the entire game.

Me no like.

 

Waaaah!

Just checked my relationship with Harald in a new game I started and I'm getting a hit with him for "moving forces near his cities".

Those "forces" were a single scout I had moved past his lands like 2 hexes from his border. Come on, game .. I'm not going to start a war with one scout, am I?

S.

 

I just finished a game on the 6-player snowflake map, it's pretty fun actually. Lots of contention for the middle where all the natural wonders and most of the strategic resources are, as well as just the strategical chokehold on the map in general. Of course taking control of it also means everyone is going to gang up on you. At the same time it also has a lot of options for naval battles on the sides in-between the land-tongues. I think this could actually be a great multiplayer map for those who play that (I don't)

Haven't tried the 4-player one yet

 

Well, it seems Apostles can now stack... so, Religious Stacks of Doom now?

 

Yup.... ugly AF, Maybe they forgot to add the Alpha Channel to the texture ,

 

Let me share my experience (playing as France on Emperor difficulty, pangea with some inland seas).

Let me start with positives:
a. AI is more aggressive in the beginning and much better attack cities. In Classical era I again left my capital poorly defended and China AI made really good effort almost taking it. they sent good military force (4 warriors + slinger) and they really tried first to siege it and then take down defence. However, for some reason at the moment when they could've taken my capital (just one last attack), China offered peace paying 1gpt! Mb AI tried to save its damaged warriors, but still a bit stupid move.
Although not ideal, siege process really improved comparing to what it was before. I'll check how it will work with AI+ or AI cleanup, mb these mods will work differently with the new patch.

b. AI settles in a good locations, prefers rivers/seasides and avoids empty desert. Also, AI usually settles new cities at a distance of 3-6 tiles from existing ones - sometimes it's 3 tiles when there is a lack of space/close enemy border (which is imho smart thing to do) but in general settling process is fine. Also there is no insane settlers building - AI spreads steadily. Overall, I think this part is fine (although need to test island maps).

c. Looks like AI understands how to use city-state army. In my war against China city-state army marched to my city and seiged it - it was soo nice surprise (screen attached). i don't know whether CS did it or China AI bought its army but it is really great. This helps to eliminate over-spamming of CS units.

d. AI builds good number of districts and really competes for GPs - I managed to get only one great scientists and when I look on Great writer points some unmet civilization producing 16 GW points per turn(!).

e. AI builds wonders actively - I couldn't get any wonders (and tbh construction costs are ridiculous for many of them) in my game. AI tries to build them straight after researching the required tech.

Now about negatives:

a. AI peace offers are still weird. Mentioned above peace was strange but didn't impact on the game. However, during my second war with China I managed to take one of their cities and killed many units (however AI still had sizeable force).
They offered at first 37 gpt (before city was taken) and then after it they offered 4 luxuries and insane 102 gpt! This was at medieval age and I didn't see many ai caravans so I suspect AI somehow cheats when makes these offers. It really breaks the game...

b. Warmongering issue: I took one city at Medieval age in a defensive war and got denounced but literally everyone. I think this leads to smaller number of wars and as a result AI doesn't lose their units, leading them to concentrate production on workers/districts/buildings.

C. AI snowballing: I don't know how much is the AI production/science bonus on Emperor difficulty, but I played with less science per pop (city spec mod, 0.50spp instead of 0.7) and smaller tech boosts. And still, brazilian AT crews in 1470ad! I guess if Sumeria would be in the game, I would see modern armor at that time. AI bonuses need to be reduced and some penalties/bossts needs to be added for being massively ahead or behind in science.

 

Many useful improvements

Still no map regenerate button

I have a disease. I don't want to play England in the middle of a jungle, or Russia in a desert...

 

I want to take 2 seconds to think about the name of the patch, "fall patch" ...
Is it about the movie "the fall", the TV series, a wrong translation of "Der Untergang" movie ... ?
I can't understand ...

 

Quick summary: I put together a short video for anyone looking for a rapid breakdown of the patch's biggest changes to the game. If you or someone you know is looking for a quick summary, I think you'll find it useful.

I went with a "Top VI Changes" format, but I was very liberal in my inclusion of multiple types of changes into single points on the list.

Feel free to reply with thoughts on whether something else from the patch should have been given more emphasis; everyone has their own take on what makes these updates valuable to them, and your feedback will help me make future update videos for Civ even better.

Enjoy!

-H

 

The AI is still bad. It still attacks cities on a whim and then stops. It offers peace and is happy to give up a city when it doesn't suffer particularly badly from the war and has tech advantage. It still carpets units cluelessly.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn