Fall patch discussion thread

[Browd]

And I assume you build commercial hubs (and harbors) as soon as you can, and then trader units spam.

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

I dont understand how people are short of gold in this game. I'm always massively in the positive, making over +1000gpt without even trying. The early game is slightly different, but its really just a matter of running conscription

I have about 250 hours in, so I've played many games of Civ 6, and I understand you have, too. I've had games with extreme income surplus in later eras, and like I said, before the patch I had no problems making things balance, or get it back into balance within 5 or 10 turns, held afloat by 1 or 3 dismissed units. There's this "hump" or speedbump that happens around the time of entering renaissance era, and it has alot to do with city maintenance, not unit maintenance.

Here's an example of a game I played a couple days ago. I defeated Brazil before 500bc, got 3 cities out of it. Now these three cities, for whatever reason, were not profitable. What ended up happening was, under the burden of my 7 total cities, even without unit maintenance, I was 11g deficit. ( With unit maintenance, with conscription, after the war ended I was -19) I looked around for tile fixes when I realized I was having this problem, I found 1 gold here or there on banana/citrus/tea improved tiles, and that was not enough to keep myself from going bankrupt. Even slotting a bunch of 1 gold water tiles still netted me 5 gold deficit. So I looked at what I'd done, and considered what I could have done differently. Early economy absolutely leans on tile income, until you can get out your couple commercial/harbor districts so as to increase trade route limit and then get trade routes going.

So, sure I had it fixed within another 10ish turns, but by then, my entire army had deserted and my game sucked for awhile. Yes, I should have anticipated this, and that's what I'm communicating now. Subsequent games, like the one I'm playing this morning, have involved intentionally settling near tile income if I want to play an early aggressive game, while it was not like that before, because I could sack a few units to get over that speedbump. If I'm not being so aggressive so early, if I don't have 7 or 8 cities trying to rock out infrastructure at 1ad, it's not so much of an issue, and that's why I call it a speedbump.

 

[rezaf]

Is it just me or is the post-patch AI even more aggressive when it comes to pursuing religious development?
I wasn't very good at this previously, but post-patch, when I build my first religious district, all religions in the game have already been founded and I'm stuck with my core belief.
I know that pursuing Stonehenge usually nets you a "free religion" (or it almost does), but how does the AI manage to do this so fast even without that wonder, all while building more cities, more units etc.?
On prince, mind you, so they shouldn't get free things, right? Am I supposed to have/invest the thousands of gold or faith it takes to purchase a great prophet?
Or is there some sort of special screen I should be visiting constantly but am not aware of?

Also:
How the heck didn't they not get around to fix the issue where the city doesn't show the last thing it produced but the thing it produced before that instead?
What about the issue where you occasionally have no sleep/fortify option and MUST move your unit before being able to do anything.
Or the issue where one of your own units (I had it on a settler and a trader at least) shows the "Barbarians have spotted you" exclamation mark?
Anyone remember the old "Son, I am disappoint" meme?

 

[AppleDumplingHead]

Do you have any trade routes? By the renaissance a single international one can give you +20gpt. With the right wonders/great merchants even domestic ones can hand you a sizeable pot of gold. Then there are policies which boost gold from trade routes, commercial zones and harbours. Run one of them.

Now if you don't have any commercial zones at all, then obviously you're going to be running a deficit. That's like saying that if I dont build any holy districts I wont have any faith.

I'm talking in the bc era, just to be sure we're on the same page, on immortal difficulty, I have no wonders except the ones I capture. I stopped making districts before currency because I was building catapults and crossbows. No trade route is worth more than 6 gold and I don't have an envoy in a yellow city state, I don't think there were any. Anyway, sending trade routes halfway across the map isn't helpful because there are still frequent barbarian spawnings.

It's like you're talking about, like, 1200-1400ad, and yeh, like I said, by then a person has 3-5 trade routes, one or two garnering 10ish gpt, I understand. This is wayyyy before what you're referencing, and I think on a harder difficulty level, or maybe you're playing with other than standard resources, or something's amped about your game if you have all these wonders and extra policies in 500bc or even 1ad.

 

[Sic]

The fact that they didn't fix AI unit upgrading is really disappointing. Especially because there are multiple mods out there that have successfully fixed it! Firaxis could have copied one of those, if nothing else.

Are we sure that they're "refusing" to do it (the AI, that is), and it isn't that they can't? Do we know that the AI has money in all games? What if they're situationally horrible at getting funds?

Are the mod creators vocal about what the solution was?

I find these problems rather fascinating. There must be a reason the AI programmers at Firaxis is failing (or refusing to give it enough weight for it to be fixed). It might impact other aspects of the AI negatively.

Though, given the quality of other parts of the game, I'm not completely ruling out incompetence.

 

[Disgustipated]

Terrible they can't fix this problem. Civ3 had a solution (I believe it was 3 and not 4). It's a fairly simple solution as well. Amazing they can't do it.

 

[darko82]

The patch did not solve this. All leaders look like this. Pale or red or colorish.

 

[Browd]

Not a problem with the patch (I certainly don't see what you posted). Most likely a problem with your graphics drivers or video settings.

 

[funkymunky]

Biggest problem is they require iron/niter to upgrade. Both seem very rare and require a tech to reveal so you are stuck with regular warriors until infantry if you don't get either one.

This is a really annoying aspect of this game. I wish instead preventing players from building the units for a missing resource, they would still allow the units to be built, but instead give them a combat penalty, like -50% or -75% until the resource is hooked up (one could think of it as being built with an inferior substitute resource).

I think civ5 did it that way (well, for existing units when you lost the resource). Which reminds me, whatever happened to the concept of one strategic resource per unit that Civ5 had?

 

[LDiCesare]

This is a really annoying aspect of this game. I wish instead preventing players from building the units for a missing resource, they would still allow the units to be built, but instead give them a combat penalty, like -50% or -75% until the resource is hooked up (one could think of it as being built with an inferior substitute resource).

I think civ5 did it that way (well, for existing units when you lost the resource). Which reminds me, whatever happened to the concept of one strategic resource per unit that Civ5 had?

The best model for strategic resources imo was in Kael's Fall from Heaven II Civ IV mod. Bronze ave +1, iron gave +2 to unit strength. It mattered a lot, but you weren't totally screwed without the resources.

 

[RealHuhn]

-50% would be worthless in CIV6.
According to FilthyRobot, a +30 combat difference is enough to instakill units. -50% can be even more than -30 combat strength.

So a flat decrease like -10 strength or so should be better. Or come up with another solution.
As of right now, the patch didn't fix anything. For example in my last immortal game, Norway had iron in range of a city but never bought the tile or settled another city closer to it. In atomic era, he had warrior and chariot ARMIES for crying out loud. :/ It's so silly.

 

[darko82]

Not a problem with the patch (I certainly don't see what you posted). Most likely a problem with your graphics drivers or video settings.

I don't know. I have the latest Nvidia drivers.

I turned off some video settings in the game options, and it is all right now.

 

[orasis]

Really? The AI is upgrading in my game...

Are you sure they're upgrading and not just building new units from scratch? They do get some crazy production boosts, so it's probably very easy for them to modernize through production.

S.

Positive. I can see into their border. They are not upgrading as efficiently as I am, but, they are upgrading their units.

 

[Disgustipated]

I noticed something different with this patch. Crash reports. Anyone else getting these?

I keep getting crashes when running more advanced economic policies when I have a lot of economic slots open (running Democracy, great merchant +1 economic slot, Big Ben). Just had one now. This is the first time I seen the crash report. I figure I'll report this on the fall patch notes.

 

[Falk]

After finishing my first post-patch game I've decided to now wait for the second patch. The AI is still so ludicrously terrible that I just can't bring myself to play another game.

 

[Tamir Lenk]

Since the patch, the warmongering notifications don't seem to match what happens in game. In several games I've gotten into it with an AI, and the pop up says my penalty will be "light" or "none". Nevertheless, every other Civ denounces me as a warmonger, even though all the indicators signal no penalty.

What the hell?

Moderator Action: Merged into the main Fall patch discussion thread

 

[HF22]

After finishing my first post-patch game I've decided to now wait for the second patch. The AI is still so ludicrously terrible that I just can't bring myself to play another game.

Sadly, the fact that some of the attempted AI fixes basically failed (ie settler escorting & unit upgrading), means it might be more than one extra patch before it becomes satisfactory.

The early patch was still a good thing, for the extra play testing of the attempts if nothing else. But I have accepted we are basically in open beta untill atleast the first expansion.

 

[ThERat]

Do they know what they are doing or are they just using us to beta test their ideas? Unit upgrading and settler escorting does not work as intended. In my latest game (post patch), I have seen lone settlers right at my doorsteps (clearly the AI wanted to get to the other side of my land but was stuck at my borders) and I can see a lone settler stuck in no man's land in 1400AD. I saw one settler being escorted by a catapult (that makes real sense lol).

As for unit upgrading, I see city states swarming with units that seem to follow their tech development. However, when you see the AI in 800AD (this is on emperor difficulty) fielding a warrior corp trying to fight off your crossbows and mameluks, it's just an embarrassment for the game developer.

I guess, it will take a long time until they start to really improve the game. Mind you, I paid a lot of money for this turd and I am NOT willing to fork out more money for some DLC that puts stuff into the game which should be part of the vanilla experience. It's currently Civ6 - beta. If we users don't start to show that customers are kings, this is bound to continue. They should be ashamed of the product they dared to dish out a month ago.

 

[GhostSalsa]

I saw one settler being escorted by a catapult (that makes real sense lol).

The best way to stop barbarians from abducting you has always been to put some meat on a catapult and when they all try to get the meat set off the catapult and launch them away

 

[Evs]

This is utterly pathetic.

25 years of the franchise and the 6th iteration in the series (with a patch that specifically mentions it) and the game doesn't have a functioning AI that can escort a settler.

How does anyone expect this game will ever have an AI that challenges the player on any difficulty at any stage of the game after 50 turns. Or expect to ever have a fun, exciting war with an AI that can't do the very basic of things like escort a settler or upgrade its units.

Waiting for another patch is a waste of time. The only time this game will have a functioning AI is when the community work on it. Not the Devs.