FEB 2011 Patch Details

What I don't get is the nerfed/higher cost Work Boat: I could see a lot of people ignoring them for fish until the later game when food becomes more valuable and production more abundant. What's more, the tile can't be pillaged without a boat, so you run no risk while barb galleys are around (though it seems rare for them to pillage sea resources).

 

Actually food is more valuable when your city is small and can grow faster than big cities. Farming is also take longer time. In a new city, farming and work hi food tile is always first priority.

Pop is much more value than Civ 4. One pop bring at least 1 science and more than 1 coin from trade rout.

 

Nevertheless, the Lighthouse seems like a smarter early investment (at least until Compass) for any city with more than one fish: it will up the fish's yield by 2 food and it's costs are reduced. Of course, we don't yet know how much reduced, but it seems plausible that it'd be comparable to two work boats given that atm LH is 80 and Boats 30.

 

I need to start a new game, Before the patch I made 70 gold/turn, after the patch I make -51 gold /turn.

So, how do you make gold with this patch?

 

Merchants and Great Merchants. And get Economics, quick.

 

Huh. Interesting. Hit to ICS, low numbers of big cities won't care, and selling luxury resources just became more important. Nifty.

 

Started a game with new patch.

Initial thoughts:
Granary is pretty good now, can often get 4 or more for 70 . It seems better than the aqueduct pre-renaissance. If the granary gives you 4 , you need to maintain a 6 average surplus to match with aqueduct. Aqueduct is twice as expensive. I don't really see going off of an education beeline to get it.

There are more sheep/cows around now and with tradition base your borders will expand to grab them. This improves early food/hammers.

Also seems like there's more barbs than before.

 

The changes to TPs and trade routes would have been an EXCELLENT excuse for nerfing the 10 GPT you still get from lux trades. Dammit why didn't they do that. The increased border push from Tradiberty (Libertrad? Liberdition?) makes a settle-the-luxes strategy even more of a no-brainer.

 

Playing as Americans; I'm loving how cheap it is to buy tiles with the Angkor Wat. Alexander doesn't love it, but that's his problem.

The free Settler from Liberty was nice; I could time it for when I was good and ready.

I actually looked for high-deer city sites to settle! (I was near Tundra).

Haven't built a Trading Post yet; I've been relying on a super-capitol to provide me with my early game gold, and it's working well enough. Of course, I was America, with their Riverside starts.

 

•Nuclear and Solar Plants now require Factory

This seems kinda unfair. If you don't have any coal you get screwed out of Solar AND Nuke plants? *dislike*

•Granary gives bonus 1 food for Wheat/Banana Deer

What's a Banana Deer?

And I see they still haven't changed to absurd Iron requirement for Catapults (but not for Cannons???). Makes zero sense.

 

It's still easy to gain coal, by trading for it or by allying a CS with the resource. And you only need coal while building the factory, after that it'll not need coal and still give you benefits.

 

I'm having the same problem. My usual strategy used to have me swimming in gold. Not anymore. Also, income seems to fluctuate wildly for no reason that I can discern.

 

Currency--->markets(mints if needed)--->National treasury--->golden ages--->bank in the NT city

 

I'm late in a game as Polynesia (continents, standard everything, immortal), and I am making 300+ GPT. You can still make a lot of gold, but you need to get past economics to get the game back to pre patch gold levels. And as Tabarnak alluded to, you need to have a couple of cities optimized for gold production.