[GS] June 2019 Patch Details

[acluewithout]

I expect I’ll mostly build IZs in triangles with my city centre and on an aqueduct, probably with my city centre on a river and in otherwise highly productive cities (eg lots of mines). If you do that, it’s immediately +3, and the aqueduct will give extra housing / extra pop to work the additional high production tiles. If you can have an adjacent quarry and or lumbermills, that gets you to +5.

But +5 is still rubbish. IMO, IZs need to average about +5 to +7 to actually be with the effort of building.

 

[etsharry]

I LOVE that they did buff specialists a bit with the tier 3 buildings giving them additional yields, but i think it is still a relative uninteresting mechanic because it will come into action so late and i do not thinkn the benefit is enough to build a strategy around it. I know this is kind of OT but i once had this idea that they should get specialists a promotion tree like units, that would promote so much more incentive and strategy to build certain districts and manually place specialists in them just to get specific promotions. I thought about promotins like additional yields in specific terraintypes (like up to 3 dessert tiles get pluis 1 production) in the city this specialist works in or higher level promotions like plus 5 loyality etc etc. Eventually you would be able to pass those specialists around in your empire with an UI like with the great works and maybe even trade with them.

sorry for that derail, but i really love the announced patch so much. most things make so much sense, it is really a great time when designers listen so much to the communities like yours!

 

[acluewithout]

I LOVE that they did buff specialists a bit with the tier 3 buildings giving them additional yields, but i think it is still a relative uninteresting mechanic because it will come into action so late and i do not thinkn the benefit is enough to build a strategy around it. I know this is kind of OT but i once had this idea that they should get specialists a promotion tree like units, that would promote so much more incentive and strategy to build certain districts and manually place specialists in them just to get specific promotions. I thought about promotins like additional yields in specific terraintypes (like up to 3 dessert tiles get pluis 1 production) in the city this specialist works in or higher level promotions like plus 5 loyality etc etc. Eventually you would be able to pass those specialists around in your empire with an UI like with the great works and maybe even trade with them.

sorry for that derail, but i really love the announced patch so much. most things make so much sense, it is really a great time when designers listen so much to the communities like yours!

I don’t think specialists need to be strong enough to build an entire strategy around. That’s just not the design of the game. But they have to be strong enough to be relevant.

I think the proposed Tier 3 changes will either be enough - or pretty close to being enough. I think all that’s really needed is maybe for the Tier 3 buildings to provide two extra citizen slots rather than just one. If you had that, plus the additional yield for Specialists from the T3 building, specialist would be pretty attractive notwithstanding it would only be late game.

 

[pkaem]

I don’t think specialists need to be strong enough to build an entire strategy around.

But wouldn't it be nice to get the choice of tall vs wide again? I don't mean to bash this game for having just one viable strategy but having a tall empire with 5 to 8 cities being competable on a standard map would be a great addition.

 

[Casworon]

I think thats the point of alliances. Once you have run out of room to expand naturally you can either expand further via warfare (Wide) or instead make your empire stronger through the Alliance bonuses (Tall)

 

[DemonMaster]

But wouldn't it be nice to get the choice of tall vs wide again? I don't mean to bash this game for having just one viable strategy but having a tall empire with 5 to 8 cities being competable on a standard map would be a great addition.

I have no problem being competable with 5-8 cities when I play, but that depends on how you play of course. But sure to have the game so it is more viable to be tall compared to wide wouldn't hurt.

 

[Kibikus]

But wouldn't it be nice to get the choice of tall vs wide again? I don't mean to bash this game for having just one viable strategy but having a tall empire with 5 to 8 cities being competable on a standard map would be a great addition.

Once you've played enough with the game, and understand the mechanisms well, you can easily win on Standard Deity with 4-6 cities (except Domination of course). It might not be the ultimate min-maxing approach for sub-100 victory, or whatever, but it's absolutely viable.

 

[acluewithout]

But wouldn't it be nice to get the choice of tall vs wide again? I don't mean to bash this game for having just one viable strategy but having a tall empire with 5 to 8 cities being competable on a standard map would be a great addition.

Tall v wide is dead! Long live tall and wide!

Er. What I mean is, I don’t think tall v wide empire makes much sense in Civ VI anymore. The optimal empire (more or less) is say 10 to 12 Cities, with some being quite large and most being fairly small. So, a few tall cities but an otherwise wide empire [0]. I think that’s a much more fun design than the old TvW.

Making Specialists powerful would just mean lots of big cities or obviate then need to have smaller satellite cities, which would really undercut the current game design. Really, the role of specialists (in the sense of specialising what your empire focuses on and GPP generation) has been largely taken over by projects. Your tall cities are about governors rather than specialists[1], which fundamentally limits how many big cities you can have.

Specialists shouldn’t suck though. They should provide enough yields that you use the mechanic. But at this point, I think they’re more a mechanic for squeezing that last bit of yield out of your big cities and or stopping smaller cities from growing.

I appreciate people would like specialists to do more, but I think it would really muddy the current game design if they did.

[0] To be clear, Civ VI does let you have a small (few cities) and tall (cities have high pop) empire, it just deliberately makes it sub-optimal. I actually think that’s a good design - tall and small becomes more like an achievement or a deliberately harder way to get a victory (a bit like playing peacefully); or if you’re forced to play tall and small, then you’re playing an underdog game which is cool. I’m always super pumped if I play continents with England or Japan and get a small island start - I have to economise my tiny territory and then smash everybody else much later in the game.

[1] This is why I think you should be able to select governors more than once. While I like being only able to have a small number of tall cities, I dislike only one can focus on culture and science (Pingala) or Gold and Trade (Reyna) etc.

 

[pkaem]

Sure yes you can win with fewer cities. There is just no point in having less. Creating a tall vs wide decision specialists would need a revamp aswell as amenities. But right now I chop and farm every city up to 10 anyways and having fewer cities is just not as efficent as having more. So "tall" is just to enable rationalism, further wide all the way.

 

[acluewithout]

Sure yes you can win with fewer cities. There is just no point in having less. Creating a tall vs wide decision specialists would need a revamp aswell as amenities. But right now I chop and farm every city up to 10 anyways and having fewer cities is just not as efficent as having more. So "tall" is just to enable rationalism, further wide all the way.

Yeah. I feel like the whole 10+ Pop for Rationalism was a bit of a design mistake. It pushes you towards a bunch of samey / homogeneous cities.

After introducing districts, FXS seem to have struggled a little with finding a purpose for population, and at the same time making sure that purpose doesn’t equally push you into just pumping up all your cities to a certain number.

Governors were obviously one way they’ve tried to do that - eg pingala, moshka and reyna. Indeed, governors are all about TvW. You can have a small number of highly promoted guvs boosting a few core cities. Or a larger number running around maintaining loyalty.

I think if they’d done them differently, Governors could have been a better way to encourage a small number of big cities and lots of small cities. The problem though is they are just too rigid - only one of each, each does something different with no real overlap.

I mean. Imagine if governors had worked more like great people. You’d still earn titles and have to choose between promoting an existing governor or getting a new one. But maybe the type of governor you got would be random - so you might end up with three pingala types or one or none. Depending on what you got, you might be pushed towards a wide strat or a tall science strat.

Anyway. You get the idea. But I do hope Governors get reworked at some point. The core mechanic is great - ie move them around for loyalty or keep them in one place to improve yields; a few high power ones or more numerous but less powerful. But they are just way, way too rigid as they currently are, and so apart from being a bit bland as a result, they just can’t quite make population feel really relevant.

 

[Caprikel]

What if they had it so Governors applied their effect in a zone like where every city within a certain number of tiles of this city get their effect?
That way multiple cities could benefit from a governor, and they wouldn't need to be moved around so much.
Obviously this would require re-balancing and would have many other unforeseen effects, but I think it would make Governors as
a system much more interesting and convenient.

 

[acluewithout]

I think the idea is you do have to move them around - or really, you’re giving up the advantage of moving them around if you want them to buff a particular city.

And the so sort of have an area effect, even if it’s just that they can help you spawn units that help nearby cities or help project loyalty by growing a few core cities tall.

 

[Elhoim]

Yeah. I feel like the whole 10+ Pop for Rationalism was a bit of a design mistake. It pushes you towards a bunch of samey / homogeneous cities.

Plus 10 is such a good point to stop: You get the 50% bonus, you get your 4th district, and it's a very common housing limit (fresh water + granary + 6 farms and you get there. Or an aqueduct and 2 farms). And that's not taking policies or governments into account. They should have gone with 12 or even 15 at least, to push the players towards specializing in housing improvements.

 

[darkace77450]

I expect I’ll mostly build IZs in triangles with my city centre and on an aqueduct, probably with my city centre on a river and in otherwise highly productive cities (eg lots of mines). If you do that, it’s immediately +3, and the aqueduct will give extra housing / extra pop to work the additional high production tiles. If you can have an adjacent quarry and or lumbermills, that gets you to +5.

But +5 is still rubbish. IMO, IZs need to average about +5 to +7 to actually be with the effort of building.

That +5 becomes +10 with Craftsmen (if you can spare the economic policy card slot), and if I'm not mistaken, it doubles again if combined with a Coal Power Plant.

 

[acluewithout]

...so. Does anyone have any predictions about what else will be in the patch? (...or will that just result in disappointment if those things aren’t in...)

I doubt there will be much balance stuff beyond what we’ve already been told. But these are my top guesses.

1. Unit rebalancing. I’m guessing units will have been rebalanced, particularly AC and Seige.

2. I would be very surprised if Military Engineers can’t now lay roads without spending a charge. I feel like that’s something they would have said on the stream, so you know maybe I’m wrong, but it feels like such a no-brained I’d be surprised if they didn’t make that change.

3. I think Seawall costs will be tweaked. I also expect there won’t be any other coastal city or colonial city buffs. Sad.

4. I don’t think there will be any civ buffs, except maybe (and only maybe) France.

5. I think there’s an outside chance Great Engineers have been buffed.

 

[jozef57]

often people are here to moan about the game, i ahve done this myself too lol. but this dev team is really, really great, love them. i am excited to get playing with the new changes, but still holding my breath about the promised suprise?? when will thsi finally come

 

[Kevdood83]

often people are here to moan about the game, i ahve done this myself too lol. but this dev team is really, really great, love them. i am excited to get playing with the new changes, but still holding my breath about the promised suprise?? when will thsi finally come

Some folks posting a couple pages back were saying either Tuesday or Thursday (based on the history of previous patch release days).

So, I suppose today could be the day!

 

[DemonMaster]

Nah, it will come out June 27.
Sounds pessimistic, sure, but I will be so much happier when I'm wrong

 

[SxSnts9]

My guess (barely educated guess I should add) would be Tuesday the 18th. But I've had my hopes dashed before so until we get some patch notes or a confirmed release date it's best not to worry too much about it.

 

[RohirrimElf]

My best guess would be 18 or 20 June for this patch. Firaxis disappoints me more often then not on communication. So i’l rather be pessimistic about it. And pleasantly surpriced if it would launch today.