[LP] Leader Pass Pack 5: Great Builders (Mar. 2023) - Patch Notes Discussion

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Getting a bonus from incomplete wonders that becomes Tourism at Defensive Tactics doesn't interest you?? You are very jaded my friend!

Isn't it Castles? Defensive Tactics in the Classical Era would make it crazier than it already is.

Also: this is the great builders pack...here's a bunch of culture bonuses.

I'm assuming Sejong was included in a builders pack because he basically built/created the Korean Alphabet.

 

[Tuvok694]

So I wanted to test Theodora but all I could do in the first 50 turns was building warriors and slingers to fight endless amounts of barbarian preventing me from doing anything related to faith, culture or science. And this happens in every single game. If only I could do anything to persuade the developers to finally give us an option for "medium" barbarians instead of those red devils that ruin every non-combat-oriented strategy. (Switching them off completely is no alternative because the AI will kill me even earlier.)

 

[Abaxial]

Mods?

What mod could crash everything when a game has not even started?

 

[pokiehl]

What mod could crash everything when a game has not even started?

Many mods! In fact, that's the #1 most common type of mod crash.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

What mod could crash everything when a game has not even started?

The Assets Limit is one of the biggest causes of crashes.

I even managed to crash the game when exiting the game.

 

[blackbutterfly]

Not sure why you find this funny, at this stage of the game this is the most imprtant thing they could work on!

At first I was both amused and sceptical at this (super loaded) first line of the patch notes:

Significant quantity of crash and stability fixes

...until I played Apocalypse mode.
I haven't figured out how and what has changed exactly, until I play a full Apocalypse game, but...

It looks like it has been rebalanced (in the code/DLLs, not the XML/data). Notably the forest fires.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

It looks like it has been rebalanced (in the code/DLLs, not the XML/data). Notably the forest fires.

It may have been but that's not what they mean by crash/stability fixes!

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

So I wanted to test Theodora but all I could do in the first 50 turns was building warriors and slingers to fight endless amounts of barbarian preventing me from doing anything related to faith, culture or science. And this happens in every single game. If only I could do anything to persuade the developers to finally give us an option for "medium" barbarians instead of those red devils that ruin every non-combat-oriented strategy. (Switching them off completely is no alternative because the AI will kill me even earlier.)

This is preventable.
Im not gonna write a huge essay on this, but don't use your starting warrior as a scout, and consider getting a slinger rather than a scout.
Then place those units convieniently in the way of barb camps to scare away scouts, and clear out camps when you can and before they spot you.
And if all fails, remember that they cant raze your capital anyway.

They really arent a problem once you get the routine down, believe me (as Donald would say).

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Haven't tried this yet, but I can immediately tell that Theodora is OP.
Heck, she even reminds me of Khmer, through in reverse by how she frontloads that huge culture by focusing on food (farms), whereas Khmer frontloads food to build up huge culture over time.
But where Khmer really depends on an adjacency pantheon or River Goddess, Theodora can pick whatever she wants, and also get free GPP to almost secure the religion.
And once she does, that culture (which I'd argue is the most valuable yield next to production, early in the game) is frontloaded, meaning you get a massive spike at a point where none of the civs are supposed to have that kind of culture output.
Looks even stronger than Khmer to me atm, because her power spike is so consistent and easy to set up, and also hits very early in the game.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Did they tone down the AI's Campus prioritization again? Or did I just get lucky with Great Scientists for once?

 

[AntSou]

I even managed to crash the game when exiting the game.

Another "task failed successfully"

 

[pokiehl]

Did they tone down the AI's Campus prioritization again? Or did I just get lucky with Great Scientists for once?

Nothing changed in the file in question and Firaxis has traditionally not done stealth balance changes. But with the lack of patch notes and seeming evidence of unannounced changes in Zombies mode, who knows anymore…

 

[DeutschDachs]

Finished my first game with Ludwig. That ability is crazy. I got so much early tourism off wonders around theater districts after semi-rushing Castles. Easily my fastest cultural victory (although no other Civ really going culture heavy helped). Would've been faster if the damn World Congress didn't ban Great Artists! But the relatively early tourism is so helpful.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I started my Ludwig game isolated on my own landmass, so I didn't start accruing Tourism till after I bought Lief Ericsson in the late Medieval.

Even still. By the time I finished my diplo victory in the Industrial, I had a Cultural Victory all but won as well.

Ludwig is a nice Cultural leader.

 

[Venceslau Pietro Pietra]

After 2 games with Ludwig i can say that he is a fun leader, maintaning a garden of unfinished wonders can be good for a burst in culture but will fade away if you didnt finish then, who isnt hard to do with good placed hansas, overall is great for tourism victory and has a unique playstyle, but you can still play a more tradicional german game ,with extra culture, without compromising all your tiles with flat stone bases, if you want

 

[AntSou]

Probably won't be able to play before Easter, but once I do I'll have to decide whether I should keep playing my current game (and entirely avoid the steam updates, which will wreck everything), or rush straight into a Ludwig playthrough.

I haven't been this hyped to try a leader in a while. And I don't even need to look at his uncannily wide facial features!

 

[Tuvok694]

This is preventable.
Im not gonna write a huge essay on this, but don't use your starting warrior as a scout, and consider getting a slinger rather than a scout.
Then place those units convieniently in the way of barb camps to scare away scouts, and clear out camps when you can and before they spot you.
And if all fails, remember that they cant raze your capital anyway.

They really arent a problem once you get the routine down, believe me.

Thank you for replying to my posting. I always appreciate that.

My steam account says I have over 12K game hours in Civ6. You can really believe me when I say: I know the game rules and mechanics, I know how the AI typically behaves and I know the typical strategies to achieve specific tasks. On the other hand: I often can't get the right timing or balance, and I acquired certain (hard to break) "habits" that prevent me from winning more games. At best, I am a "mediocre" player and can only win on deity with the 4 or 5 best/easiest civs with game modes on and very good starting positions. (After so many game hours, I should be more advanced.)

What you wrote in your answer is nothing new for me, but it works only sometimes because no one can "on purpose" catch or block every one of the barb scouts, especially when there are two or even more camps near your capital, which you sometimes don't even see for quite some time in the fog of war.
When a barb camp is "triggered" and the spawning of units starts, my opinion is this: 1.) Too many units are spawned in a very short time (about five in five consecutive turns) and 2.) The units are too strong compared what an "average" or "mediocre" player like me can effectively deal with. Quadriremes in turn 5, men-at-arms around turn 40 are not uncommon (even without Gaul or Babylon in the game).
All I wish for is: The developers should give us something like a "medium barbarians" option in the game setup. That could include a longer time span before the scout triggers the camp to spawn units, the camp could spawn less units, and the spawned units could be less advanced (for example swordsmen instead of men-at arms).
The good players like you or people who just don't care about barbarians could choose the other option with barbs behaving like in the current state of the game. In Civ5 that was called "raging barbarians" if I remember correctly.
Wouldn't you agree that giving the player the opportiunity to choose how aggressive he wants the barbs to be, would be a fair solution to the problem?

 

[UWHabs]

Thank you for replying to my posting. I always appreciate that.

My steam account says I have over 12K game hours in Civ6. You can really believe me when I say: I know the game rules and mechanics, I know how the AI typically behaves and I know the typical strategies to achieve specific tasks. On the other hand: I often can't get the right timing or balance, and I acquired certain (hard to break) "habits" that prevent me from winning more games. At best, I am a "mediocre" player and can only win on deity with the 4 or 5 best/easiest civs with game modes on and very good starting positions. (After so many game hours, I should be more advanced.)

What you wrote in your answer is nothing new for me, but it works only sometimes because no one can "on purpose" catch or block every one of the barb scouts, especially when there are two or even more camps near your capital, which you sometimes don't even see for quite some time in the fog of war.
When a barb camp is "triggered" and the spawning of units starts, my opinion is this: 1.) Too many units are spawned in a very short time (about five in five consecutive turns) and 2.) The units are too strong compared what an "average" or "mediocre" player like me can effectively deal with. Quadriremes in turn 5, men-at-arms around turn 40 are not uncommon (even without Gaul or Babylon in the game).
All I wish for is: The developers should give us something like a "medium barbarians" option in the game setup. That could include a longer time span before the scout triggers the camp to spawn units, the camp could spawn less units, and the spawned units could be less advanced (for example swordsmen instead of men-at arms).
The good players like you or people who just don't care about barbarians could choose the other option with barbs behaving like in the current state of the game. In Civ5 that was called "raging barbarians" if I remember correctly.
Wouldn't you agree that giving the player the opportiunity to choose how aggressive he wants the barbs to be, would be a fair solution to the problem?

Yeah, Barb RNG can lead to massive differences. The fact that you can literally on turn 1 or 2 run into a barbarian scout, who 1-2 turns later gets back to their camp, and another couple turns later starts spawning units, before you can literally even build a slinger, can be massively different than if you get lucky and either trap their scout from getting back, or just plain not having a camp nearby. IMO, I wish the barbarian scout simply had a movement rate of 2. That alone means you can keep pace and chase them down, and probably would solve 90% of the barbarian problems people deal with.

 

[xxhe]

A quick question from modder's view - do Ludwig and Sejong's LA require new coding?

We know that the previous LP leaders used existed coding. But LAs introduced in this pack seem fresh. Especially for Ludwig who gets bonus from unfinished wonders. Could his LA code be used for unfinished districts/buildings?

 

[InsidiousMage]

Wouldn't you agree that giving the player the opportiunity to choose how aggressive he wants the barbs to be, would be a fair solution to the problem?

Yes and no. The devs have said before they mostly balance the game around the default settings so too many different settings would make it harder to balance the game generally. I don't think multiple levels of barbarian intensity would be too much of an issue but there are a couple of key early inspirations and eurekas that require barbarians so that could potentially cause some issues.