Has BERT received a game difficulty balance patch yet?

[Greasy Dave]

So I stopped playing shortly after release because Apollo was too easy. I was anticipating some kind of balance patch but I've been watching the game in steam and haven't seen anything arrive over the last couple of months. I've occasionally stopped by the forums but seen no mention of a patch.

Have I missed it or is the game still at the same difficulty settings as it was on release?

 

[Gorbles]

I'm pretty sure they rebalanced Apollo once, but no idea if it will be to your tastes.

 

[Ryika]

AI got buffed in a patch shortly after release, but it's still not much more than a push-over for anyone who has some experience with higher difficulties in other Civ-games.

In Rising Tide it's even worse.

 

[Greasy Dave]

Hmm. Then I guess I won't be firing it up again. Rising Tide at release, Apollo was like Emperor on Civ V ...it was fun to explore the mechanics but after a couple of runs kind of lacking.

I'd really expected that they'd have put out a balance patch by now - I wonder if the games been shelved by firaxis.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I wonder if the games been shelved by firaxis.

Well, Firaxis is all about the soon release of xcom2 right now. After the game is out, I am sure we will hear more about BERT.

 

[Gorbles]

Or maybe the actual number of players that top Apollo makes it not worth the investment. Any number of reasons, really.

 

[ZTZaorish]

Honestly they have much bigger fish to fry first. For example, make the game really interesting.
What's the point of working on difficulties if people aren't interested in playing BE. Big issues first~

 

[H6g4505]

Honestly they have much bigger fish to fry first. For example, make the game really interesting.
What's the point of working on difficulties if people aren't interested in playing BE. Big issues first~

There is still a minority of players like me, who never played any Civ game, and have an absolute blast with BE

 

[Barathor]

There is still a minority of players like me, who never played any Civ game, and have an absolute blast with BE

And perhaps there's even another minority of players like me that "played" every Civ game religiously and not only enjoys the theme and features of BE but very much prefers the game over the historical ones. Hopefully, I'll be able to enjoy the gameplay of it much, much more later this year. XCOM 2 will keep me busy until then!

 

[Blue Emu]

Agreed... the player base isn't solely composed of people who play on the hardest difficulty levels and compete (if only against themselves) to find the most efficient and effective strategies.

I respect that play-style... but it would be easier to respect them if they, in turn, showed some measure of respect for casual players like myself who play for fun and relaxation, and who find BE (and BERT) enjoyable.

 

[Gort]

Agreed... the player base isn't solely composed of people who play on the hardest difficulty levels and compete (if only against themselves) to find the most efficient and effective strategies.

I respect that play-style... but it would be easier to respect them if they, in turn, showed some measure of respect for casual players like myself who play for fun and relaxation, and who find BE (and BERT) enjoyable.

They could have suited both groups by including hard difficulty levels in the game.

 

[Ryika]

Not like just adding some modifiers would be that difficult.

"But it's not that easy, they'd need to balance test that and so on!"*
No, Gorb, they would not need to do that, people would probably be happy to play around with difficulty settings that have only been tested enough to make sure the AI doesn't act weird because of the starting bonuses.

"But it could reflect negatively on the game!"*
As does the lack of difficulty, Gorb.

*Not actually quoting Gorb, just anticipating his responses based on how discussions about this topic played out in the past.

 

[Gorbles]

It's still man-hours that requires QA testing for the sake of QA testing, because in professional development regardless of how minor the change is, testing still needs to be done.

You'd be better off actually responding to arguments I've made (like cost-benefit analysis of the people that actually care about Apollo+ for a game that plenty of people in this subforum love to call "dead" and a "failure"), instead of attempting to stir the pot by pointedly "anticipating" arguments I might make

 

[Dactyl]

I suspect that BERT has been shelved. As has been said, Firaxis' focus now is XCOM2. However, I don't believe that their focus will return to BERT after its release. I think that they will instead start focusing on Civ6. In terms of sales, that would project to pay off better than further work on BERT.

 

[H6g4505]

I suspect that BERT has been shelved. As has been said, Firaxis' focus now is XCOM2. However, I don't believe that their focus will return to BERT after its release. I think that they will instead start focusing on Civ6. In terms of sales, that would project to pay off better than further work on BERT.

Unless we're talking about some indie living room devs, studios rarely work on just one thing at time. XCOM2 might have priority, but it probably had for a long time. A game like that doesn't take one year to make. And BE still got updates and an expansion. Thus, I don't believe BE is shelved at all.

 

[jlc22]

I'm hoping for another expansion and balance update to BE, I really enjoy the atmosphere of the game. As far as difficulty I normally play the level below Apollo (Soyuz?) but have won on Apollo, I just can't be bothered to always play that focused... at least until RT came out and it became easier IMO. Of my 105 hours Steams shows for BERT, ~80 was with BE and ~25 was with RT, which is likely different than most peoples.

 

[Greasy Dave]

Just to be clear, the dev teams for X com 2 and CiV BE were separate. I'm not saying it's impossible that Dave and the other guy haven't been pulled into in house bug testing Xcom 2....
But who the knows
All I know is that balance patches for CiV V and CivBE both came out within an couple of months of game release. The fact one hasn't come out for BERT by now, makes me believe that there probably won't be one.

Thank God for Mr. Solomon and Xcom2 ....

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Just to be clear, the dev teams for X com 2 and CiV BE were separate. I'm not saying it's impossible that Dave and the other guy haven't been pulled into in house bug testing Xcom 2....
But who the knows
All I know is that balance patches for CiV V and CivBE both came out within an couple of months of game release. The fact one hasn't come out for BERT by now, makes me believe that there probably won't be one.

Thank God for Mr. Solomon and Xcom2 ....

I'm still hoping that we get a balance patch after the XCOM2 fever has gone down.

 

[Acken]

@OP
Well I think it's harder than on day one since they released a patch at some point but it's still rather easy and RT has made it easier because of a bigger power creep without limiters. That may sound elitist but I feel hardcore Civ players looking for a challenge have simply moved on.

 

[NukeAJS]

I don't think there needs to be a tweak to difficulty but an overhaul of the AI, or at least a serious redirection of its priorities.

One thing that is really great about BE, is that there are several good strategies that are fairly or even very distinct from each other. The problem is that the AI doesn't know how to utilize most of these strategies.

I've never seen the AI academy spam or manufactuary spam. I've never seen them truly B-line any victory except for a very lucky contact victory. The AI doesn't know how to use might to alien farm, nor does it attempt to befriend the aliens (basically, they have no grand strategy towards the aliens). I've never seen the AI spam culture. I've never seen the AI do anything of note with espionage (never a level 4 or higher op; also they suck at protecting their own cities). The new diplomacy system, while making some amount of sense, also sometimes overly simplifies diplomatic relations in a bad way (You have xyz tenet so I must hate you no matter what my ultimate goals are, even if it kills me!).

The only strat the AI seems to sometimes do well is pretty much chalked up to randomness regarding other players; namely -- The AI rolled an aggressive personality; their rivals adopted diplomatic tenets that are in conflict with theirs; the AI has enough of an energy surplus to field a large military; the AI has enough production/energy to get a large army AND enough beakers to field a modern military. When all these criteria are met, the AI can go on a stomping run. But even then, the tactical AI doesn't really know how to use its military effectively, so any decent player should be able to kill the AI at a 3to1 or even 4to1 unit ratio. So, if the player is going to lose, it means that the AI has so many units, it basically just suicide bombs itself until there is no more resistance, or the player turtles up until the tides are turned.

In conclusion, the only way the AI wins is by using a mechanic it's very bad at (military) or it gets lucky and pops enough progenitor ruins to get the contact victory very early.