June 2020 Update - Patch Notes Discussion

[bengalryan9]

Some beliefs also still feel weak - eg Cathedrals still suck.

What if Cathedrals had a slot for piece of great music? Would make them interesting to someone like Peter who generally gets great musicians well before he can actually use them...

 

[Sostratus]

Some beliefs also still feel weak - eg Cathedrals still suck.

I know the art slot is alluring to some, but I think the original Gods & Kings design (it grants extra culture) would fit well in civ6.
We have a building for +2 food, production, science, faith... but no culture.
Even converting it to simply provide a couple tourism (pagodas giving diplo favor let that horse out of the barn) would work too. After all, many cathedrals rank as the top tourist destination in their city.

 

[acluewithout]

I think people are complaining about the smallness of the patch mostly because they find there are many aspects of the game which could do with some improvement. I mean, we're almost 4 years in, and I'm still waiting for a rebalancing to make big cities worthwhile.

Basically, yes.

It's quite apparent this patch was dedicated to shaking up the impact of religious gameplay in the early and mid-game. It's deceptively substantial.

The changes definitely means there are more “good” beliefs, which in turn means Religion has more value overall.

But some beliefs are still a bit dud. And I do think the lack of religious unit diversity hurts the Religion game tremendously.

I know the art slot is alluring to some, but I think the original Gods & Kings design (it grants extra culture) would fit well in civ6.
We have a building for +2 food, production, science, faith... but no culture.
Even converting it to simply provide a couple tourism (pagodas giving diplo favor let that horse out of the barn) would work too. After all, many cathedrals rank as the top tourist destination in their city.

Yeah. Cathedrals feel like they should be good... but in practice they’re pretty bad. Some culture would really help.

 

[pokiehl]

But some beliefs are still a bit dud. And I do think the lack of religious unit diversity hurts the Religion game tremendously.

I agree cathedrals are pretty bad, but I disagree with your desire for more unique religious units. I think there are already too many religious units as it is (the guru was quite superfluous to me). Warrior Monks already feel very gimmicky to me and even with the buff I'll never choose that belief. To me, more religious units just adds more micro-management and I'd rather avoid all of that.

 

[bite]

Surprise Cliffs of Dover boost to it being ... still kind of trash but slightly less bad trash

 

[Gedemon]

Overall, I find it a bit underwhelming... But maybe because they're working on the "paid" patches.

Lots of people are saying: "Well, looking at this, it's clear that they worked mainly on RD2". I don't see it that way. I saw it as "we worked mainly on secret societies, Ethiopia and the rest, and in the meanwhile we give a little something inbetween, small balances, small patches.

So, yeah, a little underwhelming because we were waiting more for the inbetween free patches, but don't forget that each "paid" patch will come with balances patches more probably.

What I feel, also, is that what we get at the beginning were the "light" stuff: easily programmed and implemented and the big stuff will be at the end. Bad marketing, maybe, but they have more time to polish the big stuff. After all, we guessed that Apocalypse was just disasters++. But Secret societies... I hope it's not just spies++ but with new mechanics. We'll see in a month.

For reference, and for what it's worth, the weight of the text changes to the XML/Lua (ie balance+UI) and artdef (visual) files was half the size of the previous patch.

Which is relatively big, and allows some hope for the remaining patches, if they plan to apply the same amount of development resources in them.

And if I were to extrapolate the text content of those two patches x6, I get bigger numbers than the text content of one expansion patch.

Yet I share the "meh" feeling, and I still believe the NFP is not a good idea, IMO the game was still needing a coherent expansion, not individual optional components.

 

[Bitterman]

Man I would really try Red Death if it wasn't multiplayer-only.

 

[Sostratus]

Man I would really try Red Death if it wasn't multiplayer-only.

Iirc when they released it, the issue is the AI can’t really handle the radiation. And it’s not really worth programming it to do that. (Maybe someone could import the miasma logic from Beyond Earth.)

 

[DWilson]

Man I would really try Red Death if it wasn't multiplayer-only.

You can play it if you set it up against only AI in the multiplayer menu, but note the AI is supposedly quite bad, even for Civ VI

 

[acluewithout]

snip

Yeah. I’m not a huge fan of how Religion is so unit focused. But it is what it is.

To be clear, I mean “unique religious units” in the sense of a religious unit that’s only available to a specific religion, eg how Warrior Monks are essentially only for the Religion with the Warrior Monk ability.

I actually think Gurus would have worked better as unique unit, ie linked to a belief, so not everyone was building them.

 

[Morningcalm]

Red Death is quite fun in multiplayer, and short, so the June patch should encourage others to give it a go.

I haven't tried out that two-player only World War scenario in multiplayer lobbies, and I think it's just hard to get people to join it.

I wonder if other updates will look at the scenarios? I guess that's unlikely. I will say some are a bit dull at the moment though.

 

[Kupe Navigator]

Russia just got buffed by doing... absolutely nothing!

 

[azmundai]

did they not fix great work steals? really?

 

[steveg700]

I like the belief changes, but...still no pantheon to boost lakes???

C'mon.

 

[Browd]

Man I would really try Red Death if it wasn't multiplayer-only.

You can always set up a single human-player hot seat game (where all of the other factions are AI controlled).

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Am I missing something? Shouldn't Diplomatic Victory be in here?

 

[iammaxhailme]

I wasn't expecting a huge gamechanging balance every time considering they've confirmed there'll be monthly patches, so this is fine, although I admit it's pretty boring.

Some random thoughts...




Red Death - Season 2

• blah blah blah....

Who cares about red death? Not me and probably less than 5% of the civ 6 playerbase

Natural Wonders

• Eye of Sahara: +2 Production and +1 Science base yield while still providing +3 Science and +1 Production once the game reaches the Atomic Era.
• Yosemite: Additional +1 Food while still providing +1 Gold, +1 Science, and +2 Appeal to adjacent tiles.
• Cliffs of Dover: +4 Appeal to adjacent tiles and still provides +3 Culture and +2 Gold for land tiles. (Before just+2 Appeal.)

Dover still sucks. They should have given the base plains hill yields to the tile as well. Other changes are pretty unremarkable.

Religion/Beliefs

• Lady of the Reed and Marshes – Pantheon: +2 Production from Marsh, Oasis, and Desert Floodplains. (Before just +1 Production from Marsh, Oasis, and Desert Floodplains.)

I don't think this'll rise to the level of general usage, but situationally, you're going to get some really awesome games with this. Probably as Egypt. Too bad you can't Polderize marshes like you could in civ 5!

• Dar-e Mehr – Worship: This building is no longer pillaged by Environmental Effects. Still provides +3 Faith and +1 additional Faith for each Era since constructed or last repaired.

So JUST the building is immune to environment? Should have made it the whole district, at least.

• Gurdwara – Worship: Grants +1 Housing, +3 Faith, and +2 Food. (Before just +3 Faith and +2 Food.)
• Pagoda – Worship: +3 Faith and +1 Favor (Before +3 Faith and +1 Housing)
• Feed the World – Follower: Shrines and Temple provide +3 Food and +2 Housing each. (Before Shrines and Temples provided Food equal to their Faith output.)

Good, pairing food with housing makes sense

• Work Ethic – Follower: Holy Site district’s Faith adjacency bonus provides production as well. (Before just +1% Production for each follower up to 15%)

Does it do the adjacency AND the 1%/follower? Wow. That's nuts, and I'll probably be picking this every time. Heck even with only the adjacency, it's great.

• Cross-Cultural Dialogue - Founder: +1 Science for every 4 followers. (Before +1 Science for every 5 followers of this Religion in other civilizations.)

This is almost like the "pop = science" tall boost from civ 5. I like it. It also gives you a reason to use religion if you are a science civ.

• Tithe – Founder: +3 Gold for each city following the Religion. (Before +1 Gold for every 4 followers of this Religion.)

Since I like playing tall, I usually picked Tithe over Church Property, so I'm a bit sad to see it go, but this is a decent compromise.



Overall, I like almost all the changes here! I do admit they are mostly quite minor, but still good. I look forward to doing a religious science game using either Reeds and Marshes or Work Ethic, paired with Cross-Cultural Dialogue. Probably as someone like Russia, Japan, or Brazil, who can get good high adjacency Holy Sites. None of them are great at building tall though... I suppose you can get tall from jungle chops with Brazil?

 

[DWilson]

Does it do the adjacency AND the 1%/follower? Wow. That's nuts, and I'll probably be picking this every time. Heck even with only the adjacency, it's great.

Still great, but it's a replacement, rather than in addition to. Wording is definitely misleading.

 

[sonicmyst]

Reading the patch notes and by looking at the reaction of people here, I think we are a bit hard to please.

Anyway, is crossplatform working? I think that is the biggest fix in this patch aside from the belief tweaks.

And yes, NW balancing seems... lacking.

 

[UWHabs]

My game in progress I still seem to be getting the +1% per believe rather than the adjacency bonus, but I'm assuming that's because the game was started before the patch.

But yeah, I feel like truly giving the religion changes a go will be my next task, so once I finish my current game, I should probably find a religious civ to see what I can do.