If I Purchase the New Frontier Pass Can I Still Play with just the options of the original game?

an old man

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 20, 2022
Messages
25
I am considering purchasing the New Frontier Pass expansion to play with the new options available. But I am concerned that I will not like playing where during later stages of the game climate change will make changes that I do not enjoy playing with.

If I install the expansion pack, do I still have an option to play with just the standard rules which I am playing with now with just the original game installed?

Thank you.
 
Climate change is part of the Gathering Storm explansion, not the New Frontier Pass. NFP is primarily about the special game modes (which you have to specifically enable; they're off by default) but also adds a number of new civilizations and some mechanics (such as the Diplomatic Quarter) and, if I'm not mistaken, units.

As for Gathering Storm, at the very top of the game setup screen, you can pick a 'ruleset'. If you find you don't enjoy playing with Gathering Storm, you can instead select the Rise and Fall (or Vanilla) ruleset to disable these mechanics. Alternatively, you can also go to the Additional Content screen and disable the DLC there. If you do that, you'll have to enable it again if you want to play with it once more.

I want to say that Firaxis implemented climate change pretty well, though. It's a mechanic that can really easily get really annoying if implemented badly (like in Civilization II), but that's not the case here. Rising sea level is an extremely late-game issue, and can be dealt with by building Flood Barriers; most of my games end before sea level rise becomes significant. The increase in disasters from climate change is also not that noticeable to me, plus disasters don't feel that bad because they grant extra yields, even if this becomes less if climate change becomes worse.
 
I am considering purchasing the New Frontier Pass expansion to play with the new options available. But I am concerned that I will not like playing where during later stages of the game climate change will make changes that I do not enjoy playing with.

If I install the expansion pack, do I still have an option to play with just the standard rules which I am playing with now with just the original game installed?

Thank you.

Climate change is part of the Gathering Storm explansion, not the New Frontier Pass.

Note though that the very first content pack of NFP introduced some bug that makes the Deforestation factor go backwards. When it kicks in, and it kicks in irrespective of any chopping, it seems, it starts at 50% instead of at 10%, and then goes down to 30% and 10% (if the game goes long enough, which it most often does not), instead of going up to 10%, 30% and 50%.

And the factor applies retroactively, so one turn your carbon footprint may be 2000, next turn it becomes 3000. That results in a few climate change phases happening over a few consecutive turns and the world sinking almost immediately. Coastal cities of the AI may be suddenly left building 50 or even 100 turns worth Flood Barriers.

On iPad I have never bought the NFP and I observe there normal progression of the Deforestation factor 0% to 50%. On PC I tried to deselect the NFP in Steam, but that did not help to get Deforestation Factor to normal behaviour.
 
Climate change is part of the Gathering Storm explansion, not the New Frontier Pass. NFP is primarily about the special game modes (which you have to specifically enable; they're off by default) but also adds a number of new civilizations and some mechanics (such as the Diplomatic Quarter) and, if I'm not mistaken, units.

As for Gathering Storm, at the very top of the game setup screen, you can pick a 'ruleset'. If you find you don't enjoy playing with Gathering Storm, you can instead select the Rise and Fall (or Vanilla) ruleset to disable these mechanics. Alternatively, you can also go to the Additional Content screen and disable the DLC there. If you do that, you'll have to enable it again if you want to play with it once more.

I want to say that Firaxis implemented climate change pretty well, though. It's a mechanic that can really easily get really annoying if implemented badly (like in Civilization II), but that's not the case here. Rising sea level is an extremely late-game issue, and can be dealt with by building Flood Barriers; most of my games end before sea level rise becomes significant. The increase in disasters from climate change is also not that noticeable to me, plus disasters don't feel that bad because they grant extra yields, even if this becomes less if climate change becomes worse.
 
Thank you again Sir! I may just purchase both Gathering Storm and the NFP! I appreciate that you more experienced players take the time to help out noobs like me by posting to this forum!
 
Note though that the very first content pack of NFP introduced some bug that makes the Deforestation factor go backwards. When it kicks in, and it kicks in irrespective of any chopping, it seems, it starts at 50% instead of at 10%, and then goes down to 30% and 10% (if the game goes long enough, which it most often does not), instead of going up to 10%, 30% and 50%.

And the factor applies retroactively, so one turn your carbon footprint may be 2000, next turn it becomes 3000. That results in a few climate change phases happening over a few consecutive turns and the world sinking almost immediately. Coastal cities of the AI may be suddenly left building 50 or even 100 turns worth Flood Barriers.

On iPad I have never bought the NFP and I observe there normal progression of the Deforestation factor 0% to 50%. On PC I tried to deselect the NFP in Steam, but that did not help to get Deforestation Factor to normal behaviour.

Strange. I more or less stopped playing shortly after GS release, so I had little experience with it, and by the time I started playing against all of NFP had been released already, but I don't know if I've encountered something like that. I am used to every climate change phase lasting <10 turns in the very late game, but by that time I'm already building flood barriers anyway, and as I've gotten better at the game that's become less of an issue, nowadays I tend to have flood barriers up in time if the game even reaches that far.

Besides, if those phase changes were two, three times longer than I'm used to them being, they probably wouldn't be relevant at all.
 
It should be noted that some of the NFP content depends upon having expansions. I don't remember which depends on what, but if you disable GS (or don't buy it), you may not get to use all of NFP.
 
Top Bottom