Info on Next Patch

[Razzlesnaff]

I'm so excited for this patch. Diplomacy is finally going to be more than just POC/POS. ICS is going to be significantly less effective, and I for one hope it is no longer an optimal strategy.

War is going to be more interesting. Horseman aren't going to be such a destructive force. They're now ancient era tanks. Crossbowman and Archers will have more use when bombarding enemy units rather than bombarding a city, whilst Siege Units will have more use when bombarding a city rather than bombarding units. I'm very happy about this change.

Cities heal quicker and have an increased combat strength based on technology. Defensive buildings such as Walls and Castles have no maintenance cost. No reason not to build these in every city or at least your border cities. I like to play India and Babylon, so I'm very very happy about this change.

I am confused about two particular conflicting changes in the update.

" Policies must be selected the turn they are earned. (Added 11/18)
Promotions must be selected the turn they are earned. If it’s as a result of combat, then the beginning of the next turn. (Added 11/18)"

Then today they added;

"Added game option to disable turn-blocking promotions and policy choices. (Added 12/3)"

If the developers felt that delaying promotions and selection of social policies was so game-breaking that they had to patch it, then why add an in game option that makes these things behave as they did before the implementation of this patch?

 

[BubbaYeti]

•Reduced effects of Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy (Happiness per city). (Added 12/3)
•Liberty branch balance (Settler training bonus now only applies to capital). (Added 12/3)
•Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this). (Added 12/3)

These changes, plus the earlier-announced nerfing of maritime city states, all make it appear they are targeting ICS in a major way. Why they didn't do this simply by reintroducing city maintenance and corruption is beyond me. I guess they like things complicated.

 

[lschnarch]

These changes, plus the earlier-announced nerfing of maritime city states, all make it appear they are targeting ICS in a major way. Why they didn't do this simply by reintroducing city maintenance and corruption is beyond me. I guess they like things complicated.

City maintenance is so Civ4-ish.

 

[Terefor]

•New Building: Circus Maximus (National Wonder for happiness track).
•New Building: National Treasury (National Wonder for economic track).
•3 new additional Natural Wonders added to gameplay, with accompanying “rarity” code.

Wow, new content in a patch. This is just... unexpected.

 

[AfterShafter]

I am confused about two particular conflicting changes in the update.

" Policies must be selected the turn they are earned. (Added 11/18)
Promotions must be selected the turn they are earned. If it’s as a result of combat, then the beginning of the next turn. (Added 11/18)"

Then today they added;

"Added game option to disable turn-blocking promotions and policy choices. (Added 12/3)"

If the developers felt that delaying promotions and selection of social policies was so game-breaking that they had to patch it, then why add an in game option that makes these things behave as they did before the implementation of this patch?

Check earlier in the thread. A lot of people (myself included) thought removing social policy storing was a huge mistake. Thanks Firaxis for listening - good patch

 

[Razzlesnaff]

Check earlier in the thread. A lot of people (myself included) thought removing social policy storing was a huge mistake. Thanks Firaxis for listening - good patch

I agree 100%. I think that being able to save my culture points is a good thing. I just don't understand why they have two conflicting patch notes. I don't want to have to select an option every time I start a new game just to keep things the way they are now. What if for everything else they changed they had an option to keep things the way they were in the previous patch?

They should just remove both of those notes from the patch. There is no point in both of those things existing.

 

[atteSmythe]

Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this). (Added 12/3)

I'm worried about this. The typical city can only get 12 happiness from buildings. The rest has to be with the luxury buffer, social policies, and wonders...

...but they also nerfed the early happiness policy and the biggest happiness wonder. There's now nothing early in the game to defend against the +2 per city.

Or, maybe not - instead of stopping at size 2 cities for early happiness neutrality, you'll stop at size 4 because the unhappiness hit won't be any worse. Early filler cities are actually better, even if you get fewer of them. Size five doesn't cost any happiness if you get Theocracy first. And there you'll sit for a long time, just like now.

Number of cities will be reduced based on the impact of the meritocracy and FP changes, but alpaca already proved ICS works just fine without any SPs whatsoever. I'm convinced that the maritime fixes will have little effect on filler cities. Basically, the worst case scenario is that you reduce some of your fillers' income by 1 by having to build a granary.

I'm willing to give it a shot. I just hope their goal is to rein ICS in a little, not kill it outright. In my latest game, though, each filler is generating a +8 gain. The building change will reduce that to +6, and I'm guessing that the FP/meritocracy changes will reduce that to +5. Ironically, if you want big cities, you're going to need more small ones!

 

[AfterShafter]

I agree 100%. I think that being able to save my culture points is a good thing. I just don't understand why they have two conflicting patch notes. I don't want to have to select an option every time I start a new game just to keep things the way they are now. What if for everything else they changed they had an option to keep things the way they were in the previous patch?

They should just remove both of those notes from the patch. There is no point in both of those things existing.

Ah, fair enough. Well, I really can't comment on why they decided to include both notes rather than just conglomerate them into one... I get the feeling the second note was made based on user reaction in this and other forums. I know things people talked about here showed up directly into Civ IV patches, so maybe it's wishful thinking, but I get the feeling they looked reaction here and decided to make it an option rather than an absolute.

 

[manu-fan]

All these changes look great and fit my play-style perfectly. That is, no ICS, but expand, grow and conquer.

Any chance of an ETA (especially for the Mac ). I would give my right arm just to have the Save Game issue fixed in a mini-patch first please please.

Cheers.

 

[Wulf38]

ICS isn't going anywhere until they make medium-large sized cities more efficient than small ones. Faster city growth is a step in the right direction, but the maritime nerf is going to counteract that somewhat.

The nature of the happiness buildings is a big reason why lots of small cities are better than a few medium ones. You'll still want to cover most of your unhappiness with colosseums, because they provide more happiness per gold than theaters or stadiums and come earlier. That favors building many small cities.

 

[Celevin]

I see a lot of good changes. But one change completely overrides it and makes the game even worse post-patch.

•Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). (Added 12/3)

This is such a stupid stupid change. They are fixing the symptom, not the problem. Empires will cease to be organic completely, and the game will turn into a "grow grow grow" RPG.

The problem is there's a reason people want to sell a bunch of cities. In Civ5 your "policy gain rate" is only updated when you buy or sell policies. A simple change will make your gain rate update every turn, fixing this problem, and a whole SLEW of other ones, while keeping the organic feel.

This might make the game unplayable for me. I've lost confidence just seeing this as something they'd even consider.

 

[Fluxx]

I see a lot of good changes. But one change completely overrides it and makes the game even worse post-patch.


This is such a stupid stupid change. They are fixing the symptom, not the problem.Empires will cease to be organic completely, and the game will turn into a "grow grow grow" RPG.

This might make the game unplayable for me.

Your comments, join date and post count make me know with certainty you havent been playing former civs, are not actualy thinking about things before you post, and are a traditional modern age qq'ing consumer that make games actually worse then better.

Dont get me wrong though, there are thousands of your kind, and I got nothing against you personal. I just had to get this out of my system.
Moderator Action: You are not allowed to insult other members in this forum.

 

[Pouakai]

A lot of awesome changes have been announced. I love they listened about the promos. and policies. Also the new Nat. Wonders. I'm now SUPER excieted about this patch.

 

[The Tollan]

AI
•AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory if they are wealthy. (Added 12/3)

Very positive.

GAMEPLAY
•New Building: Circus Maximus (National Wonder for happiness track). (Added 12/3)
•New Building: National Treasury (National Wonder for economic track). (Added 12/3)
•Unhappiness beyond a certain point breeds rebels within your empire, based on the number of cities a player has. (Added 12/3)
•Reduced amount of food needed for cities to grow at larger sizes. (Added 12/3)
•Tradition branch balance (Landed Elite and Monarchy improvements). (Added 12/3)
•Liberty branch balance (Settler training bonus now only applies to capital). (Added 12/3)

Some very positive changes here. The changes to Landed Elite and Monarchy will be interesting to see and hopefully make them far more useful. We will have to see exactly what effects they will have though.

The addition of rebels will hopefully sometimes cause great powers to face some challenges. That would be a huge plus for the game if the rebels can be used against large and powerful civilizations to provide some balance.

The faster city growth for larger cities is great. The combination of a reduction in the speed at which technology is gained and faster growth for large cities should help balance the game and make it operate in a fashion more akin to real world historical development (this will definitely not make the game deterministic regardless).

There are several other positive changes in the patch; however, these seemed useful to comment on at the moment.

 

[Balerune]

Originally Posted by SuperJay

•Unhappiness beyond a certain point breeds rebels within your empire, based on the number of cities a player has. (Added 12/3)

Sounds good!

Sounds good!

This sounds a lot like the civ iv revolutions mod?

 

[Pouakai]

•3 new additional Natural Wonders added to gameplay, with accompanying “rarity” code. (Added 12/3)

Just saw this. WOOHOO! Any bets on what they'll be?

 

[Horizons]

Wow, new content in a patch. This is just... unexpected.

Um not really, they probably cut a significant amount out of the core game that they were intending to sell later as DLC. But hopefully, God willing, they are seeing sense and abandoning this shocking DLC fiasco.

 

[The Tollan]

Perhaps some of the less useful buildings will get a boost in this patch.

Since some (could possibly be many) of the changes have not yet been revealed publicly it is possible that some buildings not yet mentioned in the patch notes and the issues involving ocean panels/tiles may be addressed.

 

[Pouakai]

Um not really, they probably cut a significant amount out of the core game that they were intending to sell later as DLC. But hopefully, God willing, they are seeing sense and abandoning this shocking DLC fiasco.

I imagine they will not be abandoning DLCs, but rather only put major stuff, like Civs, for DLC. (We've been promiced a 2 Civ DLC, and if I don't get it...)

 

[Putmalk]

I imagine they will not be abandoning DLCs, but rather only put major stuff, like Civs, for DLC. (We've been promiced a 2 Civ DLC, and if I don't get it...)

One can argue that new civs are only MINOR issues, and the major issues are balance, gameplay tweaks/additions, and bug-fixing.