[GS] June 2019 Patch notes discussion

I find it funny being Kim Jong Un or Donald Trump makes it more likely you'll win Diplomatic Victory. I don't want to get political here. I just find it funny diplomatic victory is less about being good, and more about being bad.

Moderator Action: Please, let's keep current world events and political figures out of this discussion -- Browd

Khmer is immediately who I thought of with this pantheon. Very good for them.

 

I just checked if I could play a "Seven Seas" map. Seems the easiest way : )

 

It's old save compatible! And it loaded with the new yields and IZ adjacencies - lovely. The problem is, I can't do trades with the stock UI anymore. It probably takes five times longer or even more to make a deal with the AI than using the Concise UI mod. I'll wait a bit for the mod update, I guess
Stratgegics went up in value from 5 gold per unit and max 4 units at a time, to 6 gold per unit and max 5 units at a time for this price in my old save.

 

Religious settlements seems to be among the best pantheons now. If you immediately build a settler at size 2 and get a good faith tile early (or start with Mali/Indonesia), it's entirely possible to have 3 cities within ~20 turns on normal speed.

 

Granted lumber mills are going to available a lot earlier and it is very nice to get the +2 production as a flat benefit regardless of adjacent tiles. This can really help some of those empty greens areas. However, the increases to yields from quarry and pasture improvements come so late in the game that they will never see the light of day in any domination game that I run. The early parts of the game are the meat and potatoes. After Industrial Era I tend to get really bored. So I try to dominate the planet before Turn 200 on Epic speed in any game that I play. I usually quit a game when it is clear that the remainder of the game is just a mop up exercise. Late game stuff is completely irrelevant to me.

 

It seems weird to pair the free settler with border growth and the free builder with population growth. You would think the builder would be better paired with border growth since you would be adding resource tiles more rapidly.

 

I betcha they thought "Religious SETTLEments --> Let's add a free Settler".

 

I didn't expect that.

Or those. Interesting changes.

 

I was excited by the new card set, censorship, but then I heard Carl by the trailer-thing whispering "cap?" regarding the ludicrous amount of Uranium he got to power its plants...
At this point why not making diplomacy a mini-card game? I don't want you to have more than 0.6 uranium or anyone else more than 3 at any given time... embargo to all non complementary to my religion hidden agenda, or whatever, the fake news, etc etc, all of these cards would make such a great card battle for diplomacy, but why not steal cards? trade them, have ONE unique CARD? dam it, burn those flower power cards everywhere!!! Holy moly, they respawn like fungus!!! There must be some druid hidden somewhere... it must be somewhere in France, they got CRUSADERS right ???? They must have the bloody druid also... I would trade my useless Great Artist charge to uncover this hidden personality....
It's ludicrous to think about it. But I feel like they could get more physical, with vaults, much like the Ark itself that could be stolen...


But there's two things that really got me not, other that Crusaders in France only *not this patch ya, I know. :
Carbon recapture and Jungle lumbermills it's not tied together.
Food production and water quality it's not tied together. You can't have huge food crops and mines, coal railroads, smog everywhere, that's non sense. It might work in cold areas like Canada but for the rest of the world you don't find farms anywhere near Industries or advanced lubermills without virus spreading with insects, birds, fish..
Dams near rainforest ares are a nightmare for the type of terrain, huge floods. Dams can't be immortal!
Neither can solar plants, wind farms.
Weather patterns are still not connected with disasters and fire ring should be a feature for the spawn of tsunamis.

The second thing is... why nerfing the disasters and floods, sea rise?? The road was cool, actually it could FREEZE ALL OVER... not just some tiny Breezes here and there, just permanent!!! Like Ironside!!!
Do not listen too much to those grilled pumpkins!! Do not let flatten you on the bad temper of this world, get going!

Nerf the builders on their ability to fix tile in one turn! that is much required, at least for me.
Builders could be nerfed in very different ways, from chopping rainforest, getting killed by Amazonian tribes while Working at a lumbermill...
Make evry builder one charge only, and tie them permanently to that tile. tile get pillaged, worker dies or get injured. the city LOSES one population.
Nerf them, creatively. China could get double, but just them, and that pantheon could be stolen alongside other cards, or traded. Give them some love, nerf them! Make them spawn automatically as the city increase population, but if it gets killed, it's gone! Can't build another one! City can produce builders if it's food is high and send them to other locations, but it would still need one population to build, etc, phantom cities could depletes all its resources and send all builders away to a new city. Depleting resources is also much due.

 

Sounds like a mod problem. My map is filled with more city-friendly terrain than I can rush settlers out to grab.

New free settler pantheon is pretty awesome for that, btw.

 

I noticed barbarians can have battering rams now

 

Maybe that explains why the barbarian pin in the map pin menu was changed to red?

 

It’s a big patch with some very good changes. Seems like lots of work under the hood too, so hopefully the game will play much better.

That said. I still thing the IZ adjacencies are wacky. LM and Quarries also need some better placement rules so they are a little more interesting (maybe both are buffed by rivers).

Very disappointing that Coastals and Colonial Cities weren’t buffed. Very disappointed Harbours have got worse.

I like the changes to ME. Another buff for England. MEs should also be able to lay roads without using charges though.

Coastal Cities still need help rebuilding from disasters.

Walls and Rams etc look very good. Slight nerf to HC. Not clear to me if there has been any more general unit rebalancing?

Harbour changes seem rubbish. I’ll miss the ability to get a little extra science and more food is stupid. Coastal Cities are often housing capped, so what’s the point of more food? Just not well thought out. If they were going to change harbours, I would have preferred more hammers.

Overall glad we’re getting more hammers. I don’t mind some of those hammers are late game either.

But the placement rules are a bit wacky and boring. Both for IZ and Improvements. I don’t think these changes are really well thought out or implemented.

Agreed. Just not well thought out.

 

Anyone started a game with Victoria? I have a whopping 3 movement on my galleys. Both the one granted by completing the RND and another one trained in the city. Both have +1 movement because of RND according to the tooltip. I'm going to bed.

 

No more than any other city, really. By the time you build a couple of fishing boats for the Celestial Navigation eureka and a lighthouse, they're equivalent to an inland city on a river. Throw in a mild buff to specialists, and this change isn't as bad as it might initially seem.

 

Firaxis, you just forgot the Garde Imperiale.

 

I don't think Religious Settlements needed any extra bonus, the free Settler is already a lot.

 

Happy to be convinced otherwise.

I’ll wait for the official ruling from @Victoria @Sostratus and the other usual suspects.

God Damn!

 

I'm looking forward to 7 seas + England to see if Britannia really can finally rule the waves.
That change to rams/towers has massively increased the importance of swords; hopefully their iron bonus will help.
I'm more interested to see if the AI will actually be able to push wall upgrades enough to make early war significantly more difficult. If you can't just gallop up to a medieval walled city with Knights, that's going to rustle some jimmies in the early war department.

 

Yeah, this is great. WAY overdue, but a truly fine change.