Impact of patch on each civ.

[Polycrates]

An analysis of the patch's likely effects on my beloved Inca:

Happiness is going to hurt. A lot. Inca are perhaps the most skewed towards going wide, and perhaps second only to India in favouring big populations. Happiness was always the Inca bottleneck, and it's going to be even more so now. However, flattening the science boosters and reducing their population dependence seems to favour wide, high production empires and so could see Inca really pushing ahead tech-wise despite the lower population. This might balance out the nerf to RAs, which hits Inca disproportionately hard.

Meritocracy and NC nerf - big boost. The free settler under Liberty opening is going to be very strong now, and it suits Inca perfectly. Reckless early expansion is the name of the Inca game. The new Meritocracy suits Inca very well, the new Republic will actually be useful, and the reduced policy cost per city one will now make culture a viable weapon in the Inca arsenal. The free GP may also come at just the right time to rush Porcelain Tower. While Liberty remains the early tree of choice, Honour may now be very interesting for Inca - they're an excellent warmongering civ, they're very good at keeping formation, slingers excel at barb hunting, and the happiness from garrisons and walls etc will really help out. I don't think Tradition will be a strong Inca tree now unless you're really hemmed in, and the +2 food 15% growth bonus is too late to be worth it for Inca now.

Scholasticism nerf will hurt Inca, since their gold was great for buying CSs.
Piety vs Rationalism will definitely not be the easy choice for Inca that some say it will be, because that happiness is going to be really important (and culture is better in wide empires now). More gold too. On the other hand, Rationalism is pretty much MADE for Inca, with the boost to easily-afforded RAs, happiness from observatories and schools (and observatories relatively stronger anyway), and even more gold from every science building (Inca are the kings of having lots of science buildings). I think it may really turn on whether RAs remain worthwhile or not.
Inca are still unlikely to want the left-hand tree of Commerce, so now that there's going to be finishers I don't think dabbling to get the rush-buy bonus will be worth it.
Order looks like being the late-game tree for Inca, though the happiness changes could reward an Inca that uses their food and production to go specialist heavy, in which case Freedom could be the winner.
Overall I see Liberty -> Honour or Patronage -> Rationalism -> Order being probably the way to go.

Metal Working requiring construction is a boost, Machu Picchu is a boost, and since Inca are excellent wonder builders the happiness from wonders in general is likely to be very worthwhile. Porcelain Tower is a HUGE wonder for Inca now, as is Forbidden Palace; Big Ben is a loss though.
Railroads coming later and weakening of production multipliers will hurt a production-heavy civ like Inca, or at least force them to use more of their gold for rush-buying. On the other hand, the MUCH faster speed of building railroads will be a real boon.

So overall lots of buffs, lots of nerfs and I have no idea whether it will all work out to make Inca weaker or stronger.

 

[Calouste]

Contrary to what people seem to think, the maritime civs (England, Ottomans and Polynesia) actually got a quite a few indirect buffs in this patch. Considering they all have a coastline start bias, the following is going to help them:

1) Great Lighthouse now comes with a free Lighthouse. That actually makes it worth specially if it stays at Sailing so you can have your extra food earlier than if you research Optics and then build a normal Lighthouse. And it's not there is that much competition for it on non-water maps.
2) Colossus is starting to look slightly useful now that it comes with 5 extra gold. Stil, you need four sea resources for it to even beat the National Treasury in gold output, so it better be cheap. Great Merchant points combine with the Great Lighthouse, which could get you a city state or two, or you could build a Customs House to boost your capital's gold production even further (you're going to get Commerce, right?)
3) Harbors now give +1 hammer for each sea resource, moved down from the Sea Port, which now gives one hammer less for each resource. That's quite a significant boost, as you can get Compass far, far earlier than Navigation. And of course Compass also gives +1 gold to each sea resource.

So what does it mean? It looks like it might be interesting (if you have say 4 sea resources) to go vertical quite a bit and start with Tradition and Aristocracy to get the two seaside wonders up, scout around with your extra quick, extra sight ships for some islands to settle and get cities you settle there quickly up to speed by buying a harbor and a lighthouse with all the gold you generate in your capital.

 

[Polycrates]

Rome perhaps became more interesting, beside the Longsword nerf and the siege buff and the Honour boost - one side-effect of the policy changes is that a number of the trees will now see you wanting to build certain buildings in more cities to get the bonus (defensive buildings for Honour; monuments and temples for Piety; libraries, universities, schools and observatories for Rationalism; factories for Order), and that's going to seriously advantage a wide Rome. Wide empires being more viable for culture also favours Rome, since you undoubtedly want the same culture buildings in each of your more numerous cities. With science generation from buildings flattened out a bit, I could see an Honour/Rationalist or Honour/Piety Roman being very strong now.

 

[Gali]

Roman wide culture is very interesting. With Piety opener you can gain a 40% bonus to culture buildings before any city modifiers. Liberty for representation and maybe Meritocracy plus piety could lead to a happy plus very cultured empire.

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

Rome is going to be pretty good, I think. Their UU are still going to have the same drawback... but their UA was always top-notch IMO. With all the other production modifiers decreasing and their UA remaining intact, I think it got even better than it was before.

Regarding the Inca... I'm not too worried. Again under the same argument, since production costs and modifiers are dropping, the Inca's start bias will help them out even more than before. Personally I think the terrace farm is a vastly underestimated improvement. When I play as them (one of my favourite 2 civs) I love that improvement. You can get cities very early on with ~20 production and they feed themselves easily too. They will have no problems throwing up those happy buildings and turning their cities into whatever you want them to be.

Also don't underestimate gold rushing. Yes Big Ben took a hit (-10%) but look at the hits production +% modiifers took. And look at the lack of changes to gold +% modiifers. That has made gold purchasing more efficient than before. So I wouldn't dismiss mercantilism as a very powerful option. The Inca's production is very high so they tend not to need it as much as some but it is very nice when a new building type appears to be able to rush buy it everywhere you need it. One of my targets is always when I get hospitals open up I buy em up fast in my core cities. I open up hospitals very early as the Inca... in fact I usually skip the bottom of the tech tree for a while in that era (i.e., chemistry and fertilizer aren't as good for the inca anyways). Another good purchase targets are museums for hermitage, if you want it (of course it has moved now).

 

[_hero_]

Rome is going to be pretty good, I think. Their UU are still going to have the same drawback... but their UA was always top-notch IMO. With all the other production modifiers decreasing and their UA remaining intact, I think it got even better than it was before.

Their UUs actually got better. Siege units combat str got boosted across the board, and due to the Longsword Nerf as well as the increased tech requirement to get to Longswords and the nerf to research agreements, and the reduced cost of Ironworking, Legions have a huge window of opportunity now

 

[seasnake]

Spain, my favorite, is going to be greatly improved after this patch in a variety of ways.

There UA remains of course situational to the wonders you find, but with so many other nerfs to World Wonders double production of Natural Wonders is going to be amazing.

In light of the reduced happiness from luxuries and buildings double happiness becomes even more useful. Getting a wonder like Old Faithful or Fountain of Youth will give 6 or 20 extra happiness in the early game. With the nerf to Stonehenge from 8 culture to 6 per turn, settling near a wonder like Mt. Fuji or El Dorado will give you 10 culture per turn, nearly twice as much, which in light of the cheaper cost of earlier social policies will make these tiles extremely valuable in the early game. The double research and gold from places like Krakatoa and Barringer Crater will remain as good as before, no nerf even if no particular benefit arising from this patch.

Second, Spain's early research order is even better. Spain needs to explore and needs to be building scouts, then a trireme or two, then get to Optics and ultimately to Astronomy in the later game so they can be finding and settling as many Natural Wonders as possible. However, rushing to Optics meant that while your rivals were working on Stonehenge, The GL or the Pyramids you're building the Great Lighthouse or Colossus (which frankly sucked). GLighthouse got a nice buff with the free lighthouse in the city, but really it's the extra gold from Colossus that's going to make that research track appealing. Further, later in the game you'll get more benefit from Compass with the boost to Harbors, extra production from your sea tiles will come much, much earlier. This will allow Spain to really make some productive coastal cities in the later game when conquistadors are settling far-off lands.

Social Policy changes, by and large, favor Spain as well. The obvious one is Naval Tradition, which will now allow their Conquistadors to gain an extra movement as well when embarked. However, Liberty's free Settler/Settler production bonus, a must have for Spain when it's trying to grab early natural wonders, now occurs on the way to a useful policy, it's no longer an obvious dead-end in the tree! Finally, the nerf to Scholasticism favors Spain, indirectly. It was always tough to invest in Patronage because 1) Commerce, which opens at the same era, really helps their coastal cities and 2) you often have to fight at least one city state to get a Natural Wonder, and if you fight more than one you rack up a ton of city state hate. This made it hard to justify investment in Patronage for the Spanish, but Scholasticism is so strong when properly leveraged that it could really hurt your research. Now that it's been brought down a little losing out on that tree will not hurt so much.

The Longsword nerf really improves both the Conquistador and the Tercio. Those were useful units already, now they will be incredible. A Conquistador can now defend while embarked, move faster (with Naval Tradition), and now it will hold it's own as a combat unit. Tercios should mow down everything in the era, they were already an amazing unit.

Finally, the delay on National College is, surprisingly, not that big of a problem for Spain. With most other civs you build it immediately in your capital for the bonuses. With Spain however you wait a while to see if you can find something like Barringer Crater or Old Faithful first. Also, you don't go to writing as quick as some other civs because you wanted Optics. The push to Philosophy will not hurt to much, by then you'll have explored enough of the map to know what city you want to put it in.

 

[krc]

An analysis of the patch's likely effects on my beloved Inca:

Happiness is going to hurt. A lot. Inca are perhaps the most skewed towards going wide....

Really? I've only played the Inca once and the position favored going tall. They seemed better than most for that, and gave me a cultural victory (at King level).

Spoiler :

 

[Polycrates]

Regarding the Inca... I'm not too worried. Again under the same argument, since production costs and modifiers are dropping, the Inca's start bias will help them out even more than before. Personally I think the terrace farm is a vastly underestimated improvement. When I play as them (one of my favourite 2 civs) I love that improvement. You can get cities very early on with ~20 production and they feed themselves easily too. They will have no problems throwing up those happy buildings and turning their cities into whatever you want them to be.

It's just that there doesn't seem to be as much happiness in total going around, even if you work for it. Inca were very good at going wide and then going taller than most wide empires, but I'm just not sure the total amount of happiness is there, even with the buildings. We'll have to see.

Also don't underestimate gold rushing. Yes Big Ben took a hit (-10%) but look at the hits production +% modiifers took. And look at the lack of changes to gold +% modiifers. That has made gold purchasing more efficient than before. So I wouldn't dismiss mercantilism as a very powerful option. The Inca's production is very high so they tend not to need it as much as some but it is very nice when a new building type appears to be able to rush buy it everywhere you need it. One of my targets is always when I get hospitals open up I buy em up fast in my core cities. I open up hospitals very early as the Inca... in fact I usually skip the bottom of the tech tree for a while in that era (i.e., chemistry and fertilizer aren't as good for the inca anyways). Another good purchase targets are museums for hermitage, if you want it (of course it has moved now).

It's a good point, I guess I'm just not sure where the most efficient place to spend that ludicrous Inca gold is going to be. I'm not saying Mercantilism is going to be bad, it's just that the policy finishers now give a really big incentive to finish a given policy tree, and there are other policy trees where I really want every policy in them - and as perhaps the least coastal civ, the left hand side of Commerce is a tough sell. Plus the road cost policy is pretty useless, the capital gold policy is weak if you've gone wide, the luxury happiness policy is one of the weaker ones, and the finisher policy is fairly underwhelming. As Inca (not necessarily the most policy-rich civ), I can see more benefit from spending my precious policies elsewhere. And therefore perhaps my precious gold might be better spent on RAs with Rationalism or CSs with Patronage, or perhaps just paying a little more but getting more benefit from rush-buying science buildings with Rationalism (or even culture buildings with Piety).
Big Ben I just don't think is quite the priority it once was. Porcelain Tower, Machu Picchu, Forbidden Palace, Notre Dame, Hagia Sophia, Pentagon seem like the key Inca wonders now.

Really? I've only played the Inca once and the position favored going tall. They seemed better than most for that, and gave me a cultural victory (at King level).

Oh they can go tall, no doubt, they're pretty flexible. But I feel that most of their advantages favour a wider empire:
- Terrace farms mean that they can found cities in more sites than anyone else
- The road/rail maintenance bonus lets them sprawl much more cheaply
- The hill/mountain bias gives them a bit of a production edge that lets them build more buildings in more cities
- The hill movement bonus lets you defend a large empire more easily. Slingers in particular are at their best for defending reckless overexpansion against the barbs
- The hill movement bonus is an amazing tool for offensive warfare, and it would be a shame not to make use of it (particularly those fast, sneaky siege engines) to add a few cites to the Incan empire

 

[ArcaneSeraph]

I'm not saying Mercantilism is going to be bad, it's just that the policy finishers now give a really big incentive to finish a given policy tree, and there are other policy trees where I really want every policy in them - and as perhaps the least coastal civ, the left hand side of Commerce is a tough sell. Plus the road cost policy is pretty useless, the capital gold policy is weak if you've gone wide, the luxury happiness policy is one of the weaker ones, and the finisher policy is fairly underwhelming.

Yeah I agree with you here. Really under commerce the only reason I go for it for almost any civ is for mercantilism... and the luxury is just a nice add on. It's very hard to make good use of the left hand side in most of my games... I have done so but always felt that other policy choices would have benefit me more. And yes I agree the +1/specialist is okay but I'm not sure I want to grab 2 or 3 arguably weak policies to get it when I could've grabbed 2 or 3 good policies that would've been far better. If you are clever with the Inca 20% off road costs is a joke... it might save you 10/turn in a massive empire... might.

Side Note: why is the finisher for commerce just 1... you get 2 from a single policy in rationalism... and this is a finisher... of a weak tree... the whole lack of commerce changes in general doesn't make a lot of sense to me... but whatever

EDIT: Now that I think about even Piety will likely make you more gold than commerce... and make you more happy... mercantilism I think is pretty much the only saving policy in the whole tree.

 

[Polycrates]

. It's very hard to make good use of the left hand side in most of my games...

It suits an increasing number of civs now (England, Ottoman, Polynesia, Denmark, Spain, maybe Songhai) and it has been improved (the extra embarked movement is a BIG bonus); but it's very situational for anyone else, probably too much so now that these policy finishers exist.

Side Note: why is the finisher for commerce just 1... you get 2 from a single policy in rationalism... and this is a finisher... of a weak tree... the whole lack of commerce changes in general doesn't make a lot of sense to me... but whatever

The devs seem to generally value 1 gold as being worth 2-3 science (and I think they're probably about right), so it's sort of on par.

As a side note, I'm now thinking a Rationalist Inca will have a LOT more science buildings; and with food perhaps not so useful for constant growth, filling those buildings with science specialists could be very profitable, favouring Freedom over Order.