neilkaz
King
I also fear the over nerf of libraries here and still feel that 1 specialist rather than two would have been ideal.
Just my opinion .. neilkaz ..
Full Patch Notes for December Patch
- Thread starter 2K Greg
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I also fear the over nerf of libraries here and still feel that 1 specialist rather than two would have been ideal.
Just my opinion .. neilkaz ..
ThERat
Deity
It's not only the library nerf, in fact almost all fixes in the new patch are reactive. There isn't that much left in the game to attract me.
Now, what sort of buildings do we have in the early/mid part of the game that are attractive? As it is, only libraries, markets, colloseums were useful. Out of those, 2 got nerfed and introduce a convoluted complication as global happiness gets mixed with local happiness. It won't be intuitive to play and add to the frustration.
Social policies get nerfed too so only the honor tree is left for the early part of the game.
Overall, I do not like the approach that the developers take at all. Civ 5 badly needs more options to play the game not less. All that is done is motivated by serious exploits of the minority of players. I mean, how many people ever get -20happiness? How many people really play deity ICS (it's just tedious and no fun).
The game is not salvageable I think. 1upt is just another game breaker as it is making the game less enjoyable. Moving units along roads is painful and frustrating. Fighting at the front with more units too as they all block each other.
Now, what sort of buildings do we have in the early/mid part of the game that are attractive? As it is, only libraries, markets, colloseums were useful. Out of those, 2 got nerfed and introduce a convoluted complication as global happiness gets mixed with local happiness. It won't be intuitive to play and add to the frustration.
Social policies get nerfed too so only the honor tree is left for the early part of the game.
Overall, I do not like the approach that the developers take at all. Civ 5 badly needs more options to play the game not less. All that is done is motivated by serious exploits of the minority of players. I mean, how many people ever get -20happiness? How many people really play deity ICS (it's just tedious and no fun).
The game is not salvageable I think. 1upt is just another game breaker as it is making the game less enjoyable. Moving units along roads is painful and frustrating. Fighting at the front with more units too as they all block each other.
Ramesses
Ruler. Visionary. Pimp.
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Now this is interesting. Despite the fact that happiness is empire-wide, rules like this make it feel like each city contributes individually. We'll see how well it works, though.
I can't really imagine a case where anybody would manage to run their happiness that far into the ground, except maybe on Deity. We'd have to go out of our way just to see what this does to gameplay.
As for anything else that gets patched that I don't like, Thal's mods can unpatch it easily. I have no interest in Steam achievements.
Well, luckily modders can just up the unhappiness from -20 to -1 and reduce the severity, so revolts are seen in many games. What I really want to know is if you can make the severity a function of both # of cities and unhappiness. That open up a whole lot of stuff. Hopefully lua would allow it if not.
Modders can also give unlimited gold, happiness and resources. No reason, apparently, to have anything bad happen in a game. What fun would that be?
I think you misunderstood Slowpoke's post, he meant that modders can change the revolt threshold from -20 to -1, so revolts happen more often.
Btw I wonder what happens when the rebels take a city (especially an unrazable one).
I realize that, probably shouldn't have quoted him to make a statement. Just something he said triggered a response about drastically modding gameplay.
Edit: Probably more in response to ThERat
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Err, Tradition got heavily buffed, and only one policy in Liberty got nerfed (and not by all *that* much as your capitol is easily your best production city at that point anyway).
Well, what confuses me is why the developers sometimes take modders ideas... but them warp them to something different. This happens so often in video games it's just weird.
The library nerf is a good example of this gone wrong. Two major mods have scientists nerfed to 2/2 science/GPP and one major mod nerfed scientists to one per library. Both are pretty acceptable. Developers see this and realise something must be done to libraries. So they make their own change. Why do they do this? They have two working nerfs to choose from? And so the result is we now have an overnerf making libraries much less useful and generally encouraging more of this "no building any buildings at all unless going for science victory" strategy. Really balance decisions should just be left to the mods.
The tradition buffs are not even close to what is needed, though, making honor or piety the only early policies. Some of them show a complete misunderstanding of the game's strategies. Monarchy at 1 gold per two capital population? Try 2 gold per one population, a quadrupled buff (techincally neglibably higher than quadruple), then watch as still nobody picks it. Edit: Heck, try FOUR gold per 1 population, then watch as still nobody picks it, as you need to waste policies to get it.
Landed elite reduces culture costs by 2/3? Yummy, more grasslands, just what we needed XD Basically it's a nerf. Even if you could pick culture expansion, you'd get what, 150 gold worth of hills? Compared to theocracy's +20ish happiness or reformation's 10-turn golden age giving double that gold and production? Please.
And with the theocracy buff, people playing well are going to be stuck in a mad race to beeline construction or horseback riding while expanding as fast as they can to hopefully get their first policy in piety.
The library nerf is a good example of this gone wrong. Two major mods have scientists nerfed to 2/2 science/GPP and one major mod nerfed scientists to one per library. Both are pretty acceptable. Developers see this and realise something must be done to libraries. So they make their own change. Why do they do this? They have two working nerfs to choose from? And so the result is we now have an overnerf making libraries much less useful and generally encouraging more of this "no building any buildings at all unless going for science victory" strategy. Really balance decisions should just be left to the mods.
The tradition buffs are not even close to what is needed, though, making honor or piety the only early policies. Some of them show a complete misunderstanding of the game's strategies. Monarchy at 1 gold per two capital population? Try 2 gold per one population, a quadrupled buff (techincally neglibably higher than quadruple), then watch as still nobody picks it. Edit: Heck, try FOUR gold per 1 population, then watch as still nobody picks it, as you need to waste policies to get it.
Landed elite reduces culture costs by 2/3? Yummy, more grasslands, just what we needed XD Basically it's a nerf. Even if you could pick culture expansion, you'd get what, 150 gold worth of hills? Compared to theocracy's +20ish happiness or reformation's 10-turn golden age giving double that gold and production? Please.
And with the theocracy buff, people playing well are going to be stuck in a mad race to beeline construction or horseback riding while expanding as fast as they can to hopefully get their first policy in piety.
LOL all these cries of NERFED have me flashing back to class based MMO's where a nerf could hurt one player more than another. Here its just a change that effects every player evenly and as a single player gamer I don't mind that the rules change a bit. Its no big deal, I just spend some time figuring out what works again.
Slowpoke, I am still under the belief that the developers are much better able to run test scenarios in debug mode on any changes. Modders can only primarily look at cause and effect. Making a change, say specialists, developers can debug through the AI code to see how they react to such a change. I have the impression that we could do that in Civ4 but not in Civ5 yet.
But I also under the belief that the development resources at Firaxis have been serious curtailed. That's why many suggestions, changes, alteration, etc. from the testers fell on deaf ears. Not out of stubborness but out of lack of time and resources to implement them. I think they are slowly trying to catch up but you do realize that it has only been less than 3 months. It took longer to have a patch of this magnitude for Civ4.
But I also under the belief that the development resources at Firaxis have been serious curtailed. That's why many suggestions, changes, alteration, etc. from the testers fell on deaf ears. Not out of stubborness but out of lack of time and resources to implement them. I think they are slowly trying to catch up but you do realize that it has only been less than 3 months. It took longer to have a patch of this magnitude for Civ4.
THANK YOU!!!!!
Been trying to argue this point myself. I'm so disappointed with this one decision in the patch.... (the rest looks good to me)
Valkrionn
The Hamster King
Emphasis on yet.
We don't have the DLL yet. Once we do, we'll be able to do the same.
Nah they don't. And the sad thing is a lot of these bad changes are incredibly obvious to someone who played more than 5 games that no test is necessary. Trust me on this. They should know this by now as well that they are not good at their own game.
As far as falling on deaf ears, there's really no excuse for it. Here's what you do as a developer. Copy/paste the list of changes you wanted to make in a patch. E-mail them to thalassicus,me,alpaca,valkrionn, and maybe dale a day before you want to code them. Throw in some non-modders of exceptional ability like martin alvito, pi-r8 or TheMeInTeam. Before you code, see what we say within 24 hours, ignore responses that don't get in by then. Edit: Heck, if you just do the non-balance changes first, you lose no time AT ALL.
You just saved over 10 days of a coding team's work for balance changes in one day. A good coder knows a day of planning saves 3 in coding, this would save far more.
As far as falling on deaf ears, there's really no excuse for it. Here's what you do as a developer. Copy/paste the list of changes you wanted to make in a patch. E-mail them to thalassicus,me,alpaca,valkrionn, and maybe dale a day before you want to code them. Throw in some non-modders of exceptional ability like martin alvito, pi-r8 or TheMeInTeam. Before you code, see what we say within 24 hours, ignore responses that don't get in by then. Edit: Heck, if you just do the non-balance changes first, you lose no time AT ALL.
You just saved over 10 days of a coding team's work for balance changes in one day. A good coder knows a day of planning saves 3 in coding, this would save far more.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
THANK YOU!!!!!
Been trying to argue this point myself. I'm so disappointed with this one decision in the patch.... (the rest looks good to me)
Wonders and luxuries are still global happiness. To say happiness is local is either a misstatement or a testament to how significant building Colosseums in small cities was.
Well, what thErat said was true, though. Before you had a choice between meritocracy and honor's great general, and tradition was worthless. Now tradition is still worthless, but liberty is as well. Now there's no choice.
Edit: Erm, wait. Earlier they said they were nerfing forbidden palaca and meritocracy, now I can't find it. Maybe it was taken out
Edit: Erm, wait. Earlier they said they were nerfing forbidden palaca and meritocracy, now I can't find it. Maybe it was taken out
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That's an opinion. He stated that social policieS got *nerfed* - which is in fact not true. Only Liberty did.
EDIT: By the way, although Meritocracy was originally slated for nerfing, it doesn't seem to be the case now.
Yes, but one cannot always rely on wonders, and luxuries can be sparse at times. I know I keep repeating myself, but I really think they should have went about attacking ICS in a way that wasn't limiting global happiness in this manner. (That's just my opinion [that I will continue to hold
])Yeh, just noticed meritocracy nerf is no longer there, good stuff
But the main concern is not the nerfs but the indirect nerfs. With theocracy as it is, can you honestly say you would ever pick a starting era policy unless you were getting a general? And by the time you get theocracy, you've gotten to rennaissance for freedom.
