FEB 2011 Patch Details

[Schalke 04]

I don't see the aqaeduct so radically important, especially not for an ICS strategy.

Due to happiness restrictions you want to have your cities capped in size. You want to have 0 excess food and your population working on either hammer or commerce generating tiles for most of the time.

I think an aqueduct is more important for some few core cities, especially your capital.

However, an aqaeduct can be interesting later in the game for your "non-core-cities", when happiness is not that limiting anymore (enough luxuries, theocracy, etc).
My concern is, that puppets will build it on their own and make cities grow which you don't want to gain in size. So puppets could eat up your happiness supply more than they do it now, especially when located in food-rich areas. Maybe annexing is sometimes a better idea than puppeting now?

 

[Monthar]

A question for the more mathematically inclined -- how cheap will America's Land Buy get if they go Tradition and then snag the Angkor Wat? Will that be countered by lower trading post output? I ask mainly for silly play.

There is most likely the same hard cap of 85% discount that the culture cost reduction already has.

 

[MadDjinn]

There is most likely the same hard cap of 85% discount that the culture cost reduction already has.

yeah.

Though, has anyone gone into the details of the /tile costing methods? I never really did but have seen the prices rise and fall during cultural expansions. (plus as you purchase tiles they go up in price) Same for changing eras (price seems to go up)

Would be interesting to see if, even hard capped, the americans with that setup keep the very cheap prices all game.

 

[Calouste]

yeah.

Though, has anyone gone into the details of the /tile costing methods? I never really did but have seen the prices rise and fall during cultural expansions. (plus as you purchase tiles they go up in price) Same for changing eras (price seems to go up)

Would be interesting to see if, even hard capped, the americans with that setup keep the very cheap prices all game.

Cost to buy an "easy" tile is 50 + 5 for each tile that you have bought anywhere before, 50, 55, 60, 65 etc. These costs scale with game speed and are always rounded down to the nearest 5, so on quick you'll see 30, 35, 40, 40, 45 etc. Tiles can have a multiplier applied to the base cost of either 1,2,3,4 depending on how "difficult" it is to acquire the tile. I don't have a full list of that, but things that increase the multiplier are whether the tile has a forest or a hill, whether it is across a river and how far it is from the city. I think the multiplier is lowered if you own more than one of the surrounding tiles, and possibly if it has a resource in it. The culture cost of acquiring tiles is independent of the gold cost, so buying tiles doesn't make the culture cost go up. The tile that will be picked next for culture is almost always one with the lowest gold cost.

I've found buying tiles to be very useful. In the capital it will get access to higher yield tiles far quicker than cultural expansion, and it can also be used to direct cultural expansion by buying a second ring tile that is next to a third ring resource. A common scenario is that I buy something like a river side Silk tile the moment my capital grows to two because it yields 1 more gold than working a grassland river tile that is part of the first 6 tiles around the city. It pays itself back.

In other cities I often buy the resource tiles I am interested in so I can put of building a monument there for a while.

It is going to be slightly less powerful in the upcoming patch because fish has gone from 3f1g to 2f1g, and 3f1g is a sweet tile to work early on. Although that might be somewhat mitigated by the increased occurence of Cattle, which can also give 3f1g tiles.

 

[vexing]

a tip for buying tiles: if you want a 2 multiplier tile and only one tile has a 1 multiplier, you should probably buy the 1 multiplier tile... it will lower at least some of the 2 multiplier tiles down to 1. it might not hit the specific one you want but it usually does, letting you get two tiles for the price of one.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

A question for the more mathematically inclined -- how cheap will America's Land Buy get if they go Tradition and then snag the Angkor Wat? Will that be countered by lower trading post output? I ask mainly for silly play.

Well I think Tradition only lowers the Culture cost, not the Buy price, so I think that it will be
-50%(America) -25%(Angor)=-75%= 25%

The cap probably still applies... but that Does make Angor better for America

 

[Ibian]

Are we sure that culture decreasers are additive and not multiplicive? I mean, we're already down to 1/3 cost with a few policies, don't need much more than that even if all you have is a monument.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Are we sure that culture decreasers are additive and not multiplicive? I mean, were already down to 2/3 cost with a few policies, don't need much more than that even if all you have is a monument.

I'm pretty sure they are... they were alway listed as -X%
(also there is only one "tile cost" policy... it used to be Monarchy, then Legalism, now Tradition... Angor Wat has some effect, but it is only 25%, and the Krepost has some effect as well. also 25%)

Probably the cap exists -85% maximum... but otherwise I think it is additive

 

[vexing]

angkor wat is 75% reduction,
the policy is 66% reduction.
whether they're additive or multiplicative doesn't matter, you hit the hard cap of 85% reduction either way.

 

[Calouste]

Are we sure that culture decreasers are additive and not multiplicive? I mean, we're already down to 1/3 cost with a few policies, don't need much more than that even if all you have is a monument.

In the new patch, if you pick Tradition, Legalism and Liberty, you won't even need a monument. There some synergy now between Tradition and Liberty that wasn't there before and might make it useful to pick up the majority of both branches. Having maintenance free garrisons for example is pretty useful if you intend on founding a few cities.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Well I think Tradition only lowers the Culture cost, not the Buy price, so I think that it will be
-50%(America) -25%(Angor)=-75%= 25%

The cap probably still applies... but that Does make Angor better for America

Oh, right . . . Angkor does both, but Tradition won't. Drat. It'd be cool to be buying super-duper-cheap tiles.

 

[GCavalry]

You will get resource tiles first, the nearest tiles first, then the low production tiles first, and the land tiles first,. And the cost to buy the low priority tiles (forest, hill, mountain) will be bigger. So if you buy the Natural Wonder (always in mountain tiles) it will cost a lot, better settle the city right next to there to get it, and get the Observatory too.

 

[Broohn]

Is this patch out? don't see anyting on Steam.

 

[Bandobras Took]

And you won't on a weekend. Assuming the can keep to their February estimate, look for it some time Monday.

 

[Schalke 04]

And you won't on a weekend. Assuming the can keep to their February estimate, look for it some time Monday.

"Monday" sounds so far away. "Today" or "tomorrow" (depending on your time zone) sounds clearly better

 

[Broohn]

Thanks guys.

Very excited for a game playable past turn 300

 

[pickle]

nerfing water tiles is the most annoying part of this for me, as if sea tiles weren't weak enough already, I never work a sea tile that does not have a resource on it. now they make the resources weaker as well. seriously, what are they thinking.

 

[Calouste]

nerfing water tiles is the most annoying part of this for me, as if sea tiles weren't weak enough already, I never work a sea tile that does not have a resource on it. now they make the resources weaker as well. seriously, what are they thinking.

The wording is a bit ambiguous, but I take "Lighthouse gives bonus 1 food for Fish; cost reduced" to mean that the Lighthouse will give 2 food to Fish tiles and 1 food to all other sea tiles, which will get sea resources with Lighthouse, work boat and Compass to 5F/2G for Fish, 4F/3G for Whales and 3F/4G for Pearls.

 

[Ibian]

Fish going all the way up to 5 will make it one of the best tiles in the game, even making it worth getting a bunch of sea tiles in many cases. Only thing comparable is a riverside flood plains wheat tile. Makes sense. Historically fish have been a major food source.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

water tiles are going to be boosted. tradeposts are now nerfed so regular water tiles are even.
also collosus never obsolets now.
also whales and pearls are boosted with 1 food with fishing boat and compass. pillageing of water improvements is easy to do, and does not go well with more costly work boats.

still regular ocean tiles are not very good. but speacial fish resourses are common and good.

also the lighthouse is getting a lower cost!