June/July Patch Notes

[Spatzimaus]

I'd rather they patch and make better the base game even if it inconveniences modding.

I'd rather they make a base game that doesn't need large-scale rebalancing nine months after release.

Of course patches break mods. That's inevitable, a consequence of how XML and Lua edits work; I'd be surprised if any decent-sized mods still worked post-patch. But this patch includes several fundamental changes to how the game itself works, most notably the massive rearrangement of Policy effects. And that sort of thing should have been resolved LONG ago; ideally it'd happen before the game was released, but realistically there'd be something like the December patch (where ICS was basically neutered) and then the game's baseline design would be locked down. That still hasn't happened yet.

The problem with completely ignoring modders is what's going to happen to the lifespan of this game as a result. If the only additional content are DLCs that most people don't buy and two or three expensive expansions down the road, then you're not going to see the sort of lifespans you had from Civ4 and such, where mods like FfH kept it interesting.

 

[civnoob13]

Has anyone else noticed that the loading screen and turn time is MUCH faster?

Or is it because I'm not using mods for the first time in ages?

 

[pspboy7]

Interesting changes, people are moaning about the nerfed wonders but I think in the long run the changes will be better overall. Reduced Stonehenge and Pyramid don't bother me that much, and National College should be available a little later in the game anyways. I especially like that Great Library gives additional science and a free library in the city where it was built (as it should). Oxford University giving extra science is a great way to balance the science track from the reduction of the NC. Also, Hanging Gardens was a really useless wonder before, but now with a +10 food bonus instead of population bonus, it is useful as a first build wonder.

 

[Valkrionn]

I just want to know if they fixed the Happiness bug I mentioned before. The patch notes didn't say anything about it, and if they left it in then some of the new Policies are going to be HORRIBLY unbalanced.

And this patch is really crippling to a lot of the existing mods; they've changed so many things that it'll take forever to get everything compatible. My own mod is going to take several days just to get to a half-working state...
It's insane that nine months after release we're getting changes of this scope; the fundamental balance of the game should have been locked down long before now. The entire concept of policy branch "Finishers", for instance, directly contradicts the (currently unused in the base game) ability to have Policies have tech prerequisites, which several mods took advantage of.

Assuming you mean the fact that the AI uses Chieftain-level happiness tags, regardless of your difficulty, then no. Why? It's not seen as a bug; Rather, it's intentional. Not one I like, but oh well.

I would hope this is the last of the major balance patches; Assuming it goes well, you should see most of the game systems well integrated with one another, rather than have just one or two set strategies that always works. Not sure how finishers contradict what you mentioned, btw? Seems to me they're just normal policies, with no culture cost.

 

[SIMPA]

My world builder gives me errors...I reinstall sdk but errors are still there
#unknown argument type in generate map"
unknown argument type in scatter resourses"
After that wb comes up and it works fine,but after I created map and added all civs and city states..I load map in mods chose map and load scenario but I cant play with civ I want for example..I chose my map..load scenario..chose russ for civ but it gives me aztecs...I chose rome..get aztecs..
Before the patch wb was fine without errors
My modded maps were fine If I chosse to play with russ for example I get the russians but civ sign was from aztecs ..the same thing if I play with german...on the right screen(when they declare war to you).
But now whatever civ i chose on moddem map I always get the same civ...on main screen I choose russ but when game is loading I get always the same civ(in this case otomans).
The game is ORIGINAL and registred at steam....

 

[binhthuy71]

Long time Civ player, short time Civ V player here so I could be wrong. After reading the forums for hints, tips, and general insight, it seems to me that the latest patch was intended to move the game away from a handful of can't-miss cookbook strategies. If so, that's a monumental step forward for the series because it will no longer be possible to select Civ "A" and follow SP track "B" while building unit/building/wonder "C" and then seize a victory.

 

[aatami]

EDIT: Found out my self, mods can delete this post if they want to.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Assuming you mean the fact that the AI uses Chieftain-level happiness tags, regardless of your difficulty, then no. Why? It's not seen as a bug; Rather, it's intentional. Not one I like, but oh well.

No, the bug I'm referring to is that Policies that add Happiness for certain buildings (+1 Happy per University, etc.) add twice the amount they're supposed to. It's because they're adding +1 to Happiness and then another +1 to UnmoddedHappiness, and the game counts both. (This is partially due to the default Happiness being changed from "nil" to 0 a few patches ago, but it was still a flawed design to begin with.)

Before this patch, there was only a single Policy in the Rationalism branch that had this effect, for a single building, so the fact that it was giving twice the normal amount wasn't very unbalancing. +2 happiness per University, instead of +1, wasn't going to drastically shift the game's balance especially since it's in a branch that directly conflicts with the primary Happiness-boosting branch (Piety).
But look at this patch: one Honor policy, alone, has FOUR of these. +4 Happiness per city that has the full set of defensive buildings is bad enough, but if it's actually giving +8? That'd be bad. And they've added several more of these effects to other branches as well, so if they left the bug in, this patch is going to be VERY unbalanced.

Not sure how finishers contradict what you mentioned, btw? Seems to me they're just normal policies, with no culture cost.

Each tree has six unlocks (one branch, five policies) in the vanilla game. All can be unlocked as soon as you have enough Culture, so in theory you can reach the Finisher very soon after unlocking the branch. The Tradition branch can be completed in the Ancient Era, if you were somehow capable of getting 6 policies that quickly. The point I was making was that if you make use of the Tech Prerequisite logic for Policies, then you'll no longer be able to reach a Finisher until after the tech prereq for the final policy in each branch. The two contradict in practice, if not in mechanics.

But if you want to see the practical effect, let's specifically talk about my own mod.

I added an additional Policy to each branch. The additional policies all unlock at techs in the future eras; this effectively prevents you from doing a Cultural victory until those eras, but in terms of the Policy effects themselves there's no change to the game's balance. That is, with 6 policy unlocks you'd be able to unlock all of the pre-existing Policies within a single branch, and get all of their existing effects; the fact that a seventh policy exists in a future era wouldn't change anything except the Cultural Victory.

But that's not true any more; now, the Finisher won't kick in until after you gain that final, seventh Policy in each branch, whereas a vanilla game could get those effects much sooner (after the first six). That's a huge problem, balancewise, especially because those final Policies would now always BE the final policies, meaning the Finisher in each branch would always be given alongside that final effect. So if the final policy does A, and the finisher does B, you'd always be gaining A+B with that final choice; there's no point in keeping the two separate. Basically, the concept of a Finisher really only works if there are several different orders in which the policies in a branch can be selected, while the idea of using tech prerequisites effectively forces a specific order to your selections by locking out certain options until the later eras.

 

[Valkrionn]

No, the bug I'm referring to is that Policies that add Happiness for certain buildings (+1 Happy per University, etc.) add twice the amount they're supposed to. It's because they're adding +1 to Happiness and then another +1 to UnmoddedHappiness, and the game counts both. (This is partially due to the default Happiness being changed from "nil" to 0 a few patches ago, but it was still a flawed design to begin with.)

Before this patch, there was only a single Policy in the Rationalism branch that had this effect, for a single building, so the fact that it was giving twice the normal amount wasn't very unbalancing. +2 happiness per University, instead of +1, wasn't going to drastically shift the game's balance especially since it's in a branch that directly conflicts with the primary Happiness-boosting branch (Piety).
But look at this patch: one Honor policy, alone, has FOUR of these. +4 Happiness per city that has the full set of defensive buildings is bad enough, but if it's actually giving +8? That'd be bad. And they've added several more of these effects to other branches as well, so if they left the bug in, this patch is going to be VERY unbalanced.

Ah. I think that was fixed; Would have to test it though to see.

Each tree has six unlocks (one branch, five policies) in the vanilla game. All can be unlocked as soon as you have enough Culture, so in theory you can reach the Finisher very soon after unlocking the branch. The Tradition branch can be completed in the Ancient Era, if you were somehow capable of getting 6 policies that quickly. The point I was making was that if you make use of the Tech Prerequisite logic for Policies, then you'll no longer be able to reach a Finisher until after the tech prereq for the final policy in each branch. The two contradict in practice, if not in mechanics.

But if you want to see the practical effect, let's specifically talk about my own mod.

I added an additional Policy to each branch. The additional policies all unlock at techs in the future eras; this effectively prevents you from doing a Cultural victory until those eras, but in terms of the Policy effects themselves there's no change to the game's balance. That is, with 6 policy unlocks you'd be able to unlock all of the pre-existing Policies within a single branch, and get all of their existing effects; the fact that a seventh policy exists in a future era wouldn't change anything except the Cultural Victory.

But that's not true any more; now, the Finisher won't kick in until after you gain that final, seventh Policy in each branch, whereas a vanilla game could get those effects much sooner (after the first six). That's a huge problem, balancewise, especially because those final Policies would now always BE the final policies, meaning the Finisher in each branch would always be given alongside that final effect. So if the final policy does A, and the finisher does B, you'd always be gaining A+B with that final choice; there's no point in keeping the two separate. Basically, the concept of a Finisher really only works if there are several different orders in which the policies in a branch can be selected, while the idea of using tech prerequisites effectively forces a specific order to your selections by locking out certain options until the later eras.

That still does not sound like a conflict of any kind, practical or mechanical; If they wanted to use tech-prereqs, then the finisher would not be available until after the appropriate tech. Simple.

It is, however, a conflict for your mod... But since when should Firaxis consider a mod when implementing the core design? If the point is simply to limit cultural victory, why not limit the project instead?

 

[Spatzimaus]

That still does not sound like a conflict of any kind, practical or mechanical; If they wanted to use tech-prereqs, then the finisher would not be available until after the appropriate tech. Simple.

Except that, as I explained, tech prerequisites by their very nature make things more linear. If you give all of the policies within a branch different tech prereqs, then you can pretty much assume that they'll be selected in order of techs in most cases, at least for the branches the player goes into as soon as possible. This directly opposes the idea of a Finisher, which is that no matter how you end the tree you get the extra bonus. Finishers are built around the idea that there are multiple ways you could end the branch.

Think about it this way. Let's say there are three policies in a given tree that are "end" policies, where they all depend on the first few. Their effects are A, B, and C. Then in this patch we add a finisher with effect D.
Sometimes, you'll take A, then B, then C, or B-A-C. In those cases, selecting C actually gives you C+D.
Sometimes, you'll take A-C-B, or C-A-B. In those cases, selecting B actually gives you B+D.
And sometimes, you take A last and get effectively A+D.

The point is that you have multiple ways to get D, so it needs to be kept separate from A, B, and C. This is where Finishers work well.

But now, create an environment where C is always the last to be picked. Before, this wouldn't be a big deal, but now taking that final policy always gives C+D. At that point, there's no benefit to having the Finisher at all; you might as well just give that one policy both effects and be done with it.
Now, what can cause C to always be picked after A and B? Well, you could rearrange the dependencies within a branch, of course, but tech prerequisites do almost the same thing. If most of the Tradition policies unlock in the Ancient Era but the last one unlocks in, say, the Industrial, then even if it's remotely possible for that one to not be last, in practice it'll always be the one that triggers the Finisher. My mod is just an extreme example of this case, but it'll come up in any mod that uses the already-existing tech prerequisite mechanism for policies, hence my objection.

If we weren't supposed to be able to give tech prereqs to Policies, then we should never have had that stub, and if we ARE supposed to be able to do so, then the onus is on the developers to not add an additional system that directly contradicts the use of that stub. It's not about any one mod, it's about a flaw in the underlying design.

 

[Valkrionn]

That is fallacy.

The point of a finisher is not simply to allow multiple routes to acquiring a bonus; The point is to reward you for finishing one policy tree, rather than starting another. No matter how you look at it, IMO, this still holds true; Whether it is granted after taking a non-linear cloud of policies, or a completely linear line of them, finishers still serve as a reward for closing a policy tree rather than opening a new one.

Hence, there is no innate conflict. The issue you see is, IMO at least, simply a result of only considering the implications within one branch, rather than amongst all of them; The entire point is to grant two policies at once when you close a tree, to give an incentive to do so. You may see conflict in how you made use of an otherwise unused, unsupported tag, but that is not the developer's problem, nor should it be.


Quite honestly: Are you REALLY trying to claim that the existence of an unused tag mandates that NO further content could ever POSSIBLY invalidate use of that tag, in any hypothetical way that modders may come up with? That is absolutely ridiculous, and carrying on in that direction does nothing more than limit us to precisely what the developers use, exactly how they use.

There is no flaw to be had in the fact that a new feature conflicts with mods; The developers cannot, and should not, anticipate the direction that every single modder will take and adapt to it. Rather, modders can and must adapt to the direction the developers move in. This is absolute fact. Some measure of cooperation is a good thing, but the level you seem to be calling for is nothing but a liability, on the part of both developers and modders.

 

[Valkrionn]

To state my point a bit less confrontationally: The tech-prereq tag still works as ever, can still be used meaningfully, and is therefore not invalidated; Your own particular design may well be invalidated, but the developers cannot and should not account for every conceivable implementation that may or may not eventually be used by a modder.

The nature of the game, of modding in general, is such that modders must adapt their designs to those of the devs, whether this be redesigning or modding out the latest changes that conflict. It cannot, and should not, be the other way.

I understand your frustration with the continual mechanical changes, as some of my own mods have been invalidated by them in the past (while others have been used as inspiration, or now near-wholesale merged, barring slight display changes), but this should hopefully be the last of the balance patches. The game finally (to me) feels like it should have at release, barring AI and MP work.

 

[aTobin]

I play civilization-nights but my saved game dont work annymore. "Civ has got runtime error...civilization5.exe has terminated the game on a unusual way..."
Are my save screwed forever or may i play it if civnights upgrade their files?

 

[Valkrionn]

No way to know until the mod is updated. Until then, I'd recommend starting a nonmodded game.

 

[Ferrouswheel]

YAYYYYYYY HOTSEATTT!!!!!!!!!!!! YAYYYYYYYYY YESSSSSS....sorry for caps but its just awesomee

 

[Libertarian]

Still no way to save Advanced Settings.

I can understand, though, given the extremely advanced coding required to save data and then retrieve it. How fortunate we are that we can save our games! They must have called in a specialist from MIT to write that particular block of code.

Would it be possible to contract him/her one more time to write the code to save our Advanced Settings?

Then again, maybe it's not an omission at all. Maybe they intentionally made it difficult to restart the game the way you like it. Some new reverse-psychology marketing strategy or something — reasoning that nothing could be more fun than combing through dozens of settings, making sure you didn't miss something, and then finding your settler in a desert with no river and 20 turns to produce a scout, only to start over and do it all again.

What fun!

 

[Montov]

Long time Civ player, short time Civ V player here so I could be wrong. After reading the forums for hints, tips, and general insight, it seems to me that the latest patch was intended to move the game away from a handful of can't-miss cookbook strategies. If so, that's a monumental step forward for the series because it will no longer be possible to select Civ "A" and follow SP track "B" while building unit/building/wonder "C" and then seize a victory.

Although they made some steps in the right direction to do this (RA's, Longswordsman, National College, University, Theocracy), I expect other dominant strategies to emerge. Probably Wonder spamming, RA's, or superfast Cultural Victory.

 

[shaglio]

So, unless I missed something, I didn't see anything about downloading a DLC. I'm at work now so I'll have to check when I get home. I didn't even think about it last night because I didn't even notice that the patch had been downloaded until I started playing my game and I noticed one of the Policy Closers was listed when I chose a new policy.

I admit I was loading up the game and loading my save game while running around the house doing some chores, so I wasn't watching the screen intently. Was there anything about a DLC? If not, is there a chance they'll realease one in the next few days? Damn, I wish I had a better memory

 

[CYZ]

No DLC announced.

I'd say that if they were planning to release around now that this patch would've been the moment. So probably nothing for a while at least

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps DLC got delayed for whatever reason and it's still coming within days.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

Patch did come out a week before everyone predicted. Maybe the new DLC is on the predicted schedule. Or maybe it was just false information made to throw us off.