Full Patch Notes for December Patch

there are mods for most of these things. go over to the mod section and quit trolling here.
Moderator Action: Accusations of trolling are seen as trolling itself, so please refrain from such posts.

 

Interesting. I'll be looking forward to seeing this in action.

 

# Allow AI to build more units if above Prince.

Maybe that means force them to build them instead of them getting 2 or 3 for the price of one?

# You can only gift 3 units now for influence.

I stopped at 2. The influence wasn't there to make it worth while.

# Library with no specialist slots.

Slows down science for earlier growth without ICS.

 

huh. not sure how they couldn't find a good "middle ground", but ok. lots of ideas have been thrown out there, the only one I've seen implemented was in balance combined. that mod starts at +1/0 for friend and +3/+1 for ally status, then goes up to +4/+2 for ally and +2/+1 friend in ranaissance. i don't think that's as crazy as the standard game, if the patch follows this maritimes will still be highly desirable but not a 100% choice at least. I actually went for two culturals first during my last game b/c I kept playing the unhappy dance, figured I'd get some more sp's at least while I was unhappy.

@timtofly: clearly the libary nerf is to kill ics. I don't think we'll be seeing any 200 turn spaceships post-patch at least... library will still be quite effective, just obviously much better on larger cities instead of on every single city regardless of size.

 

Agreed, but we can probably agree that the post-patch version will be better than the pre-patch version.

Though we don't know how it scales with era.

Having it focus on capital food production also reduces *somewhat* the effect of either don't-want-any or want-them-all.

 

Yeah I can agree with that.

 

I think this list is AWESOME! One question: Wasn't Archer/Crossbow upgrading supposed to be addressed (To keep their ranged combat promotions consistent with what they upgrade to)? I could swear I saw mention of that at some point...

That said, great job. Can't wait to play CiV.2

 

I'm surprised that nobody has commented on changing the flatland penalty from -33% to -10%. that is a HUGE change imho, especially for mounted/tanks. those guys are now almost exactly the same at defense on either terrain, 1 promotion more than makes up the difference obviously. flatland has gone for "deathtrap" to slightly more dangerous to end your turn on than hills/forest. this will provide a very large boost to the ai as well since they clearly weren't able to get the ai to focus on using rugged terrain during wartime.

 

No specialist in libraries seems like a pretty severe over-reaction. We'll see - or, to be more accurate, I'll let others see what this does. I'm on the "wait for the patch to the patch" side here, strictly from a stability point of view.

 

Research overflow!!!

 

Actually I have them at +1 in all cities and +2 in the capital and they're still pretty much the best way to spend your money, certainly better than buying things (settlers being the exception in my mod)

Interesting that they went all the way to nerf scientists. Siam is now officially the strongest civ in my opinion, unless they just forgot to add that universities also get 2 scientist slots

Good news about research overflow

 

It seems like a good idea, IMO. In my experience, Great Library/Library early on for an easy couple Great Scientists gets you through the tree REALLY fast (more so if you play Babylon).

 

Much of what you want will never happen in a patch, and parts (1UPT) would not happen in an expansion.

Either hope someone makes a mod for it, or do so yourself.

 

Kal-el made a SoD mod, so that complaint is addressed (although the UI isn't designed for it).

 

For what it's worth, I made a Dark Ages mod, and can and will make it available as a mod for general use once the patch is out. It most certainly is a graduating effect, as the more unhappiness you have, the faster you will hit that Dark Age.

I'm of the opinion that it is a better implementation, though both could work together quite well. I'd like to add revolts in as well...

 

"Research overflow now works correctly (extra beakers after completing a tech will rollover to the next tech)."

I'm very glad to hear about this change. That was one of the few things in the game I found extremely annoying!

 

The improved city defenses (walls, healing, smarter AI) should do a lot to slow down AI capture of cities.

 

Are they really much harder to take? I hope so. The defensive buildings are free of maintenance, but they still have to be constructed. City defense goes up more with tech with the new patch, but it's early tech AI on AI steamrolling that I'm most worried about.

 

Wow, that is an enormous list of changes right there. I stopped playing on December 3rd when they announced the previous batch of changes. I won't start playing again until this patch comes out, which is in less than 6 days. This will be like a whole new game. Personally I'm glad that there are now no scientists in libraries. No long will people be able to smash through the early tech tree and have rifles when the AI is still using swordsman. This will help the AI "keep up" because I doubt that they "beeline" key military techs like the player does.