Info on Next Patch

[MkLh]

Maritime states getting nerfed is probably one of the greatest things ever. Hurts ICS bad and hits the Greeks, Aztecs, and Siam slightly too. We all should have seen this coming.

It hurts non-ICS too. The question is, will it make non-ICS more competitive relatively? In worst case scenario, it may actually make ICS more powerful relatively. An ICS empire has more gold and can compensate weaker Maritimes by buying multiple of them. Furthermore, an ICS empire doesn't need that much food since cities are small and grow fast.

Social policies being chosen on the turn they are acquired is fine. It destroys a few exploits used to bring about a cultural victory (giving away cities late game once xxxx culture has been accumilated comes to mind), weakens puppeting since a puppet city almost always builds culture buildings, and puts even more pressure on ICS timing. France, Siam, and the Aztecs will also feel the effects more than others.

What ICS timing? The major ICS strategy was going after Meritocracy in Liberty tree. This strategy won't take a hit at all, since Liberty-tree is unlocked from a start.

 

[fed1943]

It looks we shall have a game!

 

[E66man]

No more spamming policies once you reach the industrial era The progress will be a lot slower not only because of the policy restriction placed, but because maritime is getting nerfed too. 2 large blows to ICS player's speedy climb to victory.

Not so. The most popular ICS policy (Meritocracy) is still in a tree available from game start, and reduced food from Maritimes just means that you have to stop to build a Watermill or Granary once in a while. In other discussions big ICS players have stated that Maritimes are not required to still make it an optimal play, and you can read aplaca's Iroquois game to see a discussion on doing ICS with no Social Policies selected at all.

 

[Txurce]

The problem is that the later awesome policy trees (Order, Freedom, Rationalism) aren't actually that far away. Even if you force people to choose some policies early, that won't stop people from slingshotting to the later trees well before 0 AD. In fact, it will only want people to slingshot even more in order to get to them before their policies are accidentally used. I'm predicting people purposely not building culture buildings until their slingshot ends just so they don't have to use up their cheaper policies.

The problems *really* are:
1) Slingshotting is way, way too easy
2) The later trees are so good compared to the earlier ones that people will build entire strategies around waiting for them


Forcing people to spend policies immediately is a band-aid fix, and saving policies is just a side-effect shown by people exploiting the real problems.

Even though I like the SP change, I agree with all of this, as well as RedFury au's analysis.

My hope is that the fix isn't as complicated as some of what has been proposed, but simply that culture costs be based more on number of cities rather than number of policies already chosen.

 

[shozum]

It hurts non-ICS too. The question is, will it make non-ICS more competitive relatively? In worst case scenario, it may actually make ICS more powerful relatively. An ICS empire has more gold and can compensate weaker Maritimes by buying multiple of them. Furthermore, an ICS empire doesn't need that much food since cities are small and grow fast.



What ICS timing? The major ICS strategy was going after Meritocracy in Liberty tree. This strategy won't take a hit at all, since Liberty-tree is unlocked from a start.

ICS is built upon having excess population working as specialists with a minimum number of buildings (library, coliseum, university, monument) in the city to support it, thus reducing maintenance. Reduce the excess population and you have a problem. If your citizens are having to work food squares to support your specialist or grow then they are not working tradeposts and they are not building anything quickly. If you do not have <+2 food> squares (due to tundra, desert, hills, etc..) then your city will not grow as you can no longer rely solely on your city state to feed you. Now you must spam granaries or even watermills which means more maintenance per city for the same effect. You COULD ally with more city states but again, more money from you for the same effect since 1 or 2 city states work now, 3 to 4 or even 5 might be needed post patch which can add up fast. You could also counter it by running a lower pop number in each ICS city (let's say average ICS city is 4) but then you are producing less gold and science per turn since you are running less tradeposts and less specialists.
Larger cities see a reduced gain from small amounts of food, so it should feel the impact A LOT less since -1 food or even -2 food won't make a huge difference when you need +4 food just to equal a +1 growth rate in say a 12 pop city (random numbers, don't qoute me here).
As far as policies go, the early game meritocracy is a good start to the equation but the late game policies are where the victory is at. Not being able to jump 3 policies into a tree in the same turn is going to slow down ICS (and culture victories) a whole lot. If they use a crap ton of puppets, they may even miss out on some of the better policies like communism as these puppet states spam culture buildings and force them to select new policies in pre-industrial eras.

They didn't slaughter ICS as it will still be a viable option if carefully constructed over the ages, but it's lost quite a bit of bite and speed. As has slingshotting since running a ton of specialist is going to be quite a bit harder and not nearly as rewarding without being able to slingshot through a social tree in one turn.

 

[JBConquests]

It seems obvious to me anyways that penalties for open terrain should be per unit per terrain type - not blindly applied for all units. Defensive bonus should be per situation not blindly applied.

Mounted units should not receive penalties in open terrain, in fact they should get a bonus - that is where they are the strongest...

Mounted Units in rough terrain should get a penalty. Ever tried to ride a horse through thickly forested hilly terrain, it's not that easy.

Non Mounted units such as Archers/Swordsman/etc... should also get penalties for attacking from the open terrain.

Defending units do not always have an advantage over the attacking unit. Imagine an archer unit attacking a spearmen unit. The Archer is in the trees, spearmen is out in the open. The archer should be able to severly damage the spearmen. Imagine a non-fortified swordsman unit out in the open being charged by a horsemen. The attacker should have a major advantage in that scenario.

 

[beestar]

On SPs: Sure you can built a large empire, get to a late era, then spam culture buildings. This defeats the designers' intent of small empires being better for culture.

However, the drawback is that you don't gain the benefit of SPs until much later than the small empires.

Whether this tips things in favour of small empires I don't know yet ...

 

[Celevin]

Even though I like the SP change, I agree with all of this, as well as RedFury au's analysis.

My hope is that the fix isn't as complicated as some of what has been proposed, but simply that culture costs be based more on number of cities rather than number of policies already chosen.

Yeah I agree. And it does address a problem or two. It's just not anywhere near what I had in mind (how I wish the devs would just read mine!)

Half the problem can be fixed by not varying social policy cost by number of cities (this is a straight multiplier). Instead, vary culture gained by number of cities. That way if someone tries to build a lot of cities for the intent of selling them later for more policies, it won't work. Doing this method is also a bit more intuitive for the player: when I build a new city, I can immediately see the effect on my policy gain.

The other problem (slingshotting for better policy trees) has no easy fix. Half of my mind is screaming "Kill huge slingshots! Make more tech requirements, and change era requirements!". The other half of my mind is screaming "Make new policy trees unlock by filling out other policy trees first, not by science era!".

 

[shozum]

The other problem (slingshotting for better policy trees) has no easy fix. Half of my mind is screaming "Kill huge slingshots! Make more tech requirements, and change era requirements!". The other half of my mind is screaming "Make new policy trees unlock by filling out other policy trees first, not by science era!".

This will be fixed, as mentioned in my earlier post. Less overall population=less specialist=less slingshotting=longer eras as techs have to be researched now and not bulbed by Great Scientists. Larger cities won't see a huge decrease from nerfed maritime states and they naturally have a larger science base because science=population. Siam (father of children guy) and the Greeks (City state mastery)are probably going to be the only viable way to effectively slingshot using the current ICS model which is what people are using to spawn >9000 great scientists a game.
That's what I am seeing at least.

 

[Txurce]

Yeah I agree. And it does address a problem or two. It's just not anywhere near what I had in mind (how I wish the devs would just read mine!)

Half the problem can be fixed by not varying social policy cost by number of cities (this is a straight multiplier). Instead, vary culture gained by number of cities. That way if someone tries to build a lot of cities for the intent of selling them later for more policies, it won't work. Doing this method is also a bit more intuitive for the player: when I build a new city, I can immediately see the effect on my policy gain.

The other problem (slingshotting for better policy trees) has no easy fix. Half of my mind is screaming "Kill huge slingshots! Make more tech requirements, and change era requirements!". The other half of my mind is screaming "Make new policy trees unlock by filling out other policy trees first, not by science era!".

Varying culture gained rather than policy cost is an excellent idea. It could really have an effect. So in principle number of SPs acquired shouldn't affect how fast you get another one. Wouldn't this cut into the slingshotting exploit?

 

[ohioastronomy]

Isn't ICS essentially impossible beyond a certain point until certain policies are unlocked? If so, won't the downsides of plastering the map become crippling when unmitigated by early access to certian SPs?

No - you really only need one easy social policy (third on the game-start tree) plus the forbidden palace to completely negate per-city happiness penalties. Cities are neutral at size 3 with + coliseum, so you can actually ICS as soon as you can build the coliseum and not worry about global happiness.

You lose the Order production bonuses, but to be honest it's not actually clear that you benefit by waiting for it even under the current setup. I'd say that the changes will simply favor an even more mechanical and simplistic approach - build a ton of little cities, make sure that you don't have any culture in them, then invest in a bunch of cultural city-states once you're "big enough" and snag the still relatively cheap early policies on order, etc.

In effect, avoid anything that adds culture past the first 3 policies, then you can get a few from order etc. on the cheap even with a lot of cities.

 

[Drawmeus]

The problem is that the later awesome policy trees (Order, Freedom, Rationalism) aren't actually that far away. Even if you force people to choose some policies early, that won't stop people from slingshotting to the later trees well before 0 AD. In fact, it will only want people to slingshot even more in order to get to them before their policies are accidentally used. I'm predicting people purposely not building culture buildings until their slingshot ends just so they don't have to use up their cheaper policies.

The problems *really* are:
1) Slingshotting is way, way too easy
2) The later trees are so good compared to the earlier ones that people will build entire strategies around waiting for them


Forcing people to spend policies immediately is a band-aid fix, and saving policies is just a side-effect shown by people exploiting the real problems.

There are really two problems to be solved for their intended Policies design to work. This solves one of them.

The first problem is specific to policies - you can just stockpile policies, so players will just save their points and dump everything the moment they unlock their most optimal branch, causing them to avoid early policies which aren't perfectly optimal, encouraging degenerate strategies (the culture point dump for the ICS support policies at Industrial Age is a prime example of this) and generally disrupting the flow of the game.

The second problem is specific to the tech tree - slingshotting is too easy. Policies place additional weight on this in that you get an extra benefit to slingshotting between eras, but policies are not the problem. Changing the policies to deal with slingshotting would be a bandaid fix; the real fix is decreasing the viability of slingshotting.

Incidentally, depending on what, exactly, they're doing with the tech building rework, this might be much less of an issue in that if they make GSes harder to get, they've effectively attacked slingshotting from the other side.

Now, whether their intended Policies design is good or not... I think they also need to rebalance rate of acquisition and have you gaining policies regardless of your victory condition, because otherwise policies intended for the culture-light victory conditions (e.g. Autocracy) are going to be nearly impossible to gain for a culture which will benefit from them. Other than that, we'll see.

 

[shozum]

No - you really only need one easy social policy (third on the game-start tree) plus the forbidden palace to completely negate per-city happiness penalties. Cities are neutral at size 3 with + coliseum, so you can actually ICS as soon as you can build the coliseum and not worry about global happiness.

You lose the Order production bonuses, but to be honest it's not actually clear that you benefit by waiting for it even under the current setup. I'd say that the changes will simply favor an even more mechanical and simplistic approach - build a ton of little cities, make sure that you don't have any culture in them, then invest in a bunch of cultural city-states once you're "big enough" and snag the still relatively cheap early policies on order, etc.

In effect, avoid anything that adds culture past the first 3 policies, then you can get a few from order etc. on the cheap even with a lot of cities.

Yeah, as an ICS you are really going to have to pay attention to where and what the city states around you are. You'll need military ones for your units, maritime ones just to stay in business, and now cultural ones to get those late game policies that make you king. It's no longer a simpe formula of

1)Buy maritime city state
2)Build arse ton of settlers
3)?????
4)Profit

 

[shozum]

There are really two problems to be solved for their intended Policies design to work. This solves one of them.

The first problem is specific to policies - you can just stockpile policies, so players will just save their points and dump everything the moment they unlock their most optimal branch, causing them to avoid early policies which aren't perfectly optimal, encouraging degenerate strategies (the culture point dump for the ICS support policies at Industrial Age is a prime example of this) and generally disrupting the flow of the game.

The second problem is specific to the tech tree - slingshotting is too easy. Policies place additional weight on this in that you get an extra benefit to slingshotting between eras, but policies are not the problem. Changing the policies to deal with slingshotting would be a bandaid fix; the real fix is decreasing the viability of slingshotting.

Incidentally, depending on what, exactly, they're doing with the tech building rework, this might be much less of an issue in that if they make GSes harder to get, they've effectively attacked slingshotting from the other side.

Now, whether their intended Policies design is good or not... I think they also need to rebalance rate of acquisition and have you gaining policies regardless of your victory condition, because otherwise policies intended for the culture-light victory conditions (e.g. Autocracy) are going to be nearly impossible to gain for a culture which will benefit from them. Other than that, we'll see.

I see them doing simple switches or changes such as library has one specialist slot while university now has two, maybe increasing % of science to 75% for public schools.

 

[Drawmeus]

I see them doing simple switches or changes such as library has one specialist slot while university now has two, maybe increasing % of science to 75% for public schools.

I agree, but even just the first switch you mentioned would put a huge cramp in ability to slingshot. A lot of slingshotting strategies depend on beeline to writing, build or buy a library in one or more cities and staff it full time until you get X number of GSes.

 

[ohioastronomy]

With these changes city-states are nice frosting, not essential. You've never needed military ones; if you're only growing to size 3-4 the maritimes make it faster but don't change the underlying logic. Cultural ones would just be a way to grab a few policies once big enough.

Ironically, nerfing maritimes will impact the ability of small empires to grow big cities, since that's where the large food surpluses are actually irreplaceable.

 

[Drawmeus]

With these changes city-states are nice frosting, not essential. You've never needed military ones; if you're only growing to size 3-4 the maritimes make it faster but don't change the underlying logic. Cultural ones would just be a way to grab a few policies once big enough.

Ironically, nerfing maritimes will impact the ability of small empires to grow big cities, since that's where the large food surpluses are actually irreplaceable.

It impacts that less than it impacts ICS, though. Now ICS cities need to grow a lot more of their food on their own to get the size needed to provided positive happiness/gold/etc. That means location matters a lot more.

It does impact small empires, but it's a much smaller percentage of their food. It puts a premium on dropping small empire cities on or near rivers and actually using farms to get enough surplus food for specialists, but that's not a bad thing imo.

 

[ohioastronomy]

It impacts that less than it impacts ICS, though. Now ICS cities need to grow a lot more of their food on their own to get the size needed to provided positive happiness/gold/etc. That means location matters a lot more.

It does impact small empires, but it's a much smaller percentage of their food. It puts a premium on dropping small empire cities on or near rivers and actually using farms to get enough surplus food for specialists, but that's not a bad thing imo.

You just don't need that much food to grow to size 4. By contrast, you need gobs of food to grow from size 15 to 16.

A reduction in maritime food will favor tiny cities and add a bit more micro (you might want a couple of farms to boost early growth.) But it will remove the only currently practical way to grow really big cities.

 

[No_such_reality]

I can't believe people are actually thinking beaker waste is not a bug --- EVEN CIV III was easier to manage! Overflow was not calculated, but there was a slider so you could minimize the beaker waste easily. Civ4 fixed the problem BECAUSE IT MAKES NO SENSE! With the click of a single specialist you could potentially save hundreds of beakers off a single tech! It's ridiculous! And now it's back in Civ5...You may not think it is important, but unless you are micromanaging nearly EVERY turn you are wasting THOUSANDS of beakers over a period of a game. That is HUGE, especially on higher levels! The only consolation is that I know the AI is too dumb to figure out how to minimize beaker overflow anyway.

I think beaker micromanagement is an exploit. Knowing you're falling two beakers short of a tech and being able to go force a single library specialist to guarantee a tech that turn is an inherent weakness in the game. I had that last night in my immortal level game, I'm looking at two turns for printing press and see I'm two beakers short so I go an force a librarian for one turn. That isn't strategic play, that's tedium.

IMHO, the amount of research needed for a given tech needs to be randomized. Give it a mean and standard distribution and have every society playing have different values for given techs. Or alternatively, keep the techs set beaker counts, but randomize the value of the research on a given turn. i.e. A librarian generates between 0 and 2 beakers per turn ( again normal distribution) and maybe some skew factor for building out a network of science that slowly improves the mean from 1 with a standard deviation of a 0.5 to a mean of 1.5 with a standard dev of 0.25. i.e. universities, public schools, etc, give bigger means and bigger standard deviations, networks of library (number of cities with/without libraries) improves the mean and reduces the standard deviation of the library. Two libraries are better than one. Large empires should lose effectiveness in cities without libraries.

 

[Baleur]

Out yet? >_>