June 2020 Update - Patch Notes Discussion

[Kwami]

I guess it is because, as the Natural Wonder is the cliff, it just looks like two grassland hills in most of it size. Nothing that suggests you should remove it to build an improvement.
Despite the additional appeal, they are still underwhelming, both benefit-wise, and appearance-wise.

I'm fine with most changes, but Work Ethic now seems broken if combined with the right panteons (to be checked if cards impact as well). I'd add it loses a bit of flavour by not tieing it to population (I mean, work ethic means your population is hard-working, isn't it). Maybe substituting the raw bonus by a +x production for each +y population would have been more flavorful.

Yeah, I think Cliffs of Dover would work better as two coast tiles instead of two grassland tiles. I wonder if that's possible, though. Can you attach cliffs to coast, or do they attach to the land tiles? They look like they're attached to the land tiles.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Because the Cliffs of Dover are CLIFFS. It doesn't make sense that they should also occupy the tiles behind them.

It absolutely makes sense. Regular cliffs are a part of their land tile, not some separate feature. I don't see why anyone would think CoD should be different.

 

[DWilson]

I feel like the Cliffs of Dover would be a lot better if they retained the base tile yields. As is, you can't use it until you have a solid food surplus, and it's not clear it's good even then. The added appeal is quite nice, but questionably usable for most of the game.

If these are mostly going to be small patches, my favorite part is we should be able to get hot fix like patches for the next year.

 

[Foulweather]

Feed the World: 6 Food and 4 Housing from a Shrine/Temple Holy Site is, wow. I can put cities anywhere with that.

Pagoda: An extra 8-12 (or more) Favor per turn is also, um, significant when going for a Diplomatic Victory, you'll be able to accumulate enough Favor to really overcome that fight at the end.

World Church, Cross-Cultural Dialogue, and Pilgrimage become more useful, I usually build up a Religion just for domestic benefits. With less focus on international religion spreading, these become options for me again, even though it kind of doesn't fit with the names World Church and Cross-Cultural Dialogue.

Some combination of Work Ethic + Tithe is going to be my go-to for general use, though.

 

[Revanchist]

Feed the World: 6 Food and 4 Housing from a Shrine/Temple Holy Site is, wow. I can put cities anywhere with that.

Pagoda: An extra 8-12 (or more) Favor per turn is also, um, significant when going for a Diplomatic Victory, you'll be able to accumulate enough Favor to really overcome that fight at the end.

World Church, Cross-Cultural Dialogue, and Pilgrimage become more useful, I usually build up a Religion just for domestic benefits. With less focus on international religion spreading, these become options for me again, even though it kind of doesn't fit with the names World Church and Cross-Cultural Dialogue.

Some combination of Work Ethic + Tithe is going to be my go-to for general use, though.

Feed the world in conjunction with the desert pantheon will be insane for Mali, especially since production isn't too big of a concern

 

[Pfeffersack]

It is hard to measure the exact scope of this update, when possible bux fixes are eventually summed up in one line without going into details. It is nice to get surprised, but for judging if intended fixes work it is better to know about them. Especially if e.g. AI improvements for RD2 should have also an impact on the base game.

I understand that it is fairly resonable that patches in higher frequence might mean individually smaller ones, but again I think the communication was less than ideal: Wasn't there a twitter statement at some point describing the scope of those "in-between"-free-patches as "comparable to the pre-NFP ones"? Maybe I have misunderstood that one, but if it was stated so (or at least could be read that way) than it is more likely to disappoint people afterwards.

Still, I waiting with my final statement on this patch until having played some turns

 

[Infixo]

Basically all balance changes are xml based, stuff that modders can easily do (lots of religion and belief mods out there). Few hours of work.
It is obvious that most of the effort went into RDS2.

No UI changes, no AI changes, no new functionalities. So very disappointing.

 

[kaspergm]

As much as some of the religion changes are welcome, it's still quite underwhelming. It even seems some of the worst beliefs are still unchanged, i.e. the ones that add like +1 gold for a commercial hub and +1 faith for a holy site, or whatever it is.

I actually think Lady Of Reeds And Marshes could be a pretty decent belief before this buff, so in my eyes it's just gotten really strong. It's pretty situational, yes, but in those circumstances where you had a start with lots of desert floodplains (and/or marsh, which is more marginal), it was actually a pretty solid production boost. I've definitely had great use of this belief when playing Mali, so I think the boost will make it even more solid.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

(NEW) Holy Waters – Enhancer: Increases Healing of your religious units by +10 in Holy Site districts belonging to cities with your majority religion, or any adjacent tiles.

Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly, but this implies that you don't have to own the city. As long as the city is following your own religion, you can heal at the Holy Site. If so, this is game-changing. You would no longer have to run your apostles back to your own cities to heal, thus eliminating much of the monotonous slog of religious victory. Convert enemy cities with Holy sites, then use them to heal up. If this is the case, this is the best enhancer belief for RV.

EDIT: I just confirmed it works! Woohoo!

 

[Bibor]

I actually think Lady Of Reeds And Marshes could be a pretty decent belief before this buff, so in my eyes it's just gotten really strong.

Lets be honest: everything apart from Religious Settlements is a consolation prize

I still basically paid $50+ for forest fires and comets. Not cool.

 

[Aurelesk]

No NW can be improved, idk why anyone would expect something different for CoD.

I do not disagree, but I do remember that, sometime, some sea wonders have a ressource on it (fish on Ha Long Bay or Great Barrier Reef). I guess it is a possibility. It is just the Cliffs of Dover does not have a role to fill. Out of the passable wonders: there is kind of 4 categories:

1. Big wonders (3 to 4 tiles) with mostly worthless yields and unimprovable tiles only useful for Holy Site adjacency and National Park: Chocolate Hills - Eye of the Sahara - Gobustan - Pantanal - Sahara el Beyda - Ubsunur Hollow
2. Sea and Lake wonders improvable with Harbor buildings: Great Barrier Reef, Ha Long Bay, Crater Lake, Lake Retba
3. The gimmicky wonders that is here just for fun but sometime have a lot of value: Bermuda Triangle, Fountain of Youth, Dead Sea
4. And the near coastal wonder that is hard to profit because it have poor yield that can't be upgraded, fit only 1 good Holy Site, rarely fit in a National Park, without any gimmicky effect: Cliffs of Dover.

 

[conorbebe]

It absolutely makes sense. Regular cliffs are a part of their land tile, not some separate feature. I don't see why anyone would think CoD should be different.

That's simply false though. Cliffs are terrain features, meaning they modify an existing terrain type, that being hills. They are no more entwined with tiles than rivers are. Furthermore, neither cliffs nor rivers prevent the player from placing improvements, so it is inconsistent that the Cliffs of Dover do.

 

[monikernemo]

Anybody got any good ideas to exploit the new Work Ethic? off the top of my head russia with cheap holy sites is good and tundra adjacency. anything else?? could be a huge buff for mali too

Can see Japan abusing work ethic too...

 

[NukeAJS]

The changes are a bit underwhelming, but let's keep in mind there was a patch/dlc last month and there is another one a month from now.

Anyways, in my first Columbia game, I took lady of the reeds and marshes simple because I started with a bunch of rice/marsh (which can be improved) in my capital and a massive river system running through a fairly large desert. I think it probably had 20 desert floodplains.

I definitely don't regret taking that pantheon. Especially because I got Petra in one city AND the Nazca CS fairly close to me and suzerained it early. With feudalism and then replaceable parts -- I have a god-like desert.

Granted, that's very situational, but most of the pantheons are.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

That's simply false though. Cliffs are terrain features, meaning they modify an existing terrain type, that being hills. They are no more entwined with tiles than rivers are. Furthermore, neither cliffs nor rivers prevent the player from placing improvements, so it is inconsistent that the Cliffs of Dover do.

But natural wonders are tiles. The cliffs of dover aren't cliffs gamewise--they're a natural wonder.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

That's simply false though. Cliffs are terrain features, meaning they modify an existing terrain type, that being hills. They are no more entwined with tiles than rivers are. Furthermore, neither cliffs nor rivers prevent the player from placing improvements, so it is inconsistent that the Cliffs of Dover do.

Huh? There's no such FeatureType "FEATURE_CLIFF". CoD IS a FeatureType, but it's also a NW, so in that respect it follows the same rules as other NW tiles.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Huh, so the video did pretty much cover everything. There just wasnt anything else to talk about. Im getting more and more confident that not buying NFP was the right call.

Funny I had the exact opposite reaction, and I have never played Red Death! With this frequency of patching they're going to be individually quite small, that was to be expected.

 

[Starwars]

Basically all balance changes are xml based, stuff that modders can easily do (lots of religion and belief mods out there). Few hours of work.
It is obvious that most of the effort went into RDS2.

No UI changes, no AI changes, no new functionalities. So very disappointing.

This is really what gets me about this. Even though I sometimes use mods that does balance changes, I wouldn't complain if they did a big balance pass across the board. Just the numbers side of things, stuff that the modders CAN do. But... have it be really substantial.

But this is just so underwhelming, even with a few nice changes to Religions.

As you say, feels more like someone took an afternoon to tweak a few numbers in the files and then... done. Pretty disappointing for someone who doesn't play Red Death.

And a few changes are just... huh? Like the meak buffing of Cliffs of Dover, or the belief that gives you whopping 2 gold for international trade routes (IF you have a shrine and a temple). The new belief that increases healing is also odd to me. But eh, maybe someone will use it.

 

[The Civs 6]

You know, I've been harping on the pass for a while, but this is a step in the right direction. This makes the religious game much more interesting for me. I think all of these changes combined are going to have a pretty huge impact on how religion operates.

 

[Myomoto]

Can see Japan abusing work ethic too...

I mean, Japan having synergy with Work Ethic seems fairly appropriate, right?