March Patch Notes (formerly february)

[PieceOfMind]

I'll take confirmation any time over anything else..

I agree with JohnnyW and SuperJay here. Knowing what 2K Greg and Liz have said in past posts, I've come to expect that usually posts that commit nothing... pretty much say nothing. Intentions don't implement features to the game, but with time, money and talent intentions can be an enabler.

 

[JohnnyW]

Intentions don't implement features to the game, but with time, money and talent intentions can be an enabler.

I like the way you wrote this sentence, it gave me a good chuckle.

 

[Deep_Blue]

In Civ 5, the easiest way to lose is?

There is no easy way to lose in CIV5

 

[mitrydates]

It's good to see these changes. I'm really happy to have the game back on track, especially regarding city production. And now there are the bonus resources that count (but still not enough as I can't trade them).

One thing is missing: remove the fantasy Natural Wonders please!

 

[Bibor]

It just doesn't. Both the human player and the AI can spam cities endlessly across the landscape.

Please do tell the readers of this forum the exact mechanics for this, because I find it really hard to believe considering the changes in the previous (not this, february) patch. You must know all the details if you do it so often.

More cities = more gold = more science = more production. There are only two tradeoffs: slower social policies (which are a bit of a luxury feature, not needed to win) and slower Golden Ages (can be grabbed regardless with Great People/ wonders).

Again, I'd like to know the specifics of this strategy, because in my games, small cities produce just a tiny fraction of gold and science of my larger cities.

Go ahead, ask the elite players who are winning on Deity.

I am zealously watching MadDjinn's deity game and there's no sign of either ICS or infinite happiness. And he's doing more than fine.

ICS city spam is the dominant strat. Martin Alvito has already posted to this effect earlier in this very thread. Global happiness stops no one from expanding, because more cities are always better.

Marvin Alvito's games are also pre-patch AFAIK so no wonder there.

And Civ5's other broken mechanics (research agreements, Great Scientists, maritime city states) all synergize better with sprawling ICS empires than tight, compact, large cities.

I don't see how maritime city-states favor ICS games anymore (since the patch). One, two, three food per city is hardly a "broken mechanic". Research agreements are a bit strange, but everyone's using them and "locking" techs isnt't that easy anymore. Also, key prerequisite techs have been added so beelining isn't that simple anymore.
Also, there are no scientist slots available pre-education.
Again, I'd like you to show me exact strategies here for such a massive dominance with GS-es and RAs that make this game super-easy.

Exactly, it's the opposite of Civ4's system. That's why it doesn't work! Of course large cities in Civ4 are designed to outproduce their maintenance. The whole philosophy of the game is having new, immature cities being a net loss on your empire, and then turning into a net profit as they grow in size and add infrastructure. As your cities mature, they can then support further cities. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop, BUT it relies on having large cities with lots of well-developed infrastructure. If you just cover the landscape with size 1 podunk villages, your economy stagnates. That's good game design. Yes, indeed, if you have lots of large, well-developed cities your economy will not go broke. Is that a serious complaint you're making?

This is entirely untrue. I watched the last X CIV4 videos from TMIT and his strategy is always the same: build as many cities as possible, boosted by early cottages. Catch up in tech by researching 2-3 key techs and trading them for like 15-20 other techs. I don't see this mechanic as "fine".
Once you're over the "hump", your empire will forever be in the positive and there are no further penalties for founding new cities. A perfect example of this is the last TMIT's game with German Terra game where he built like 30 cities on the new world by cottaging his own dozen cities on the old world, without even feeling the new cities in his budget.

I have 20 years experience playing turn-based strategy games: if you don't make cities cost money to found, then spamming cities will always be the one right strategy. Always. I have never seen this not be true.

You speak as if there's infinite happiness resources out there in CIV5. Again, I'd like you to show me how its done.

maybe something like this?

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/americanempire.html
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/immortalegypt.html
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/artofwu.html
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/liberteordre.html
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=392335
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

Again, these are all pre-patch games as far as I can see.

But I guess none of that was valid, because the December patch fixed all of the issues with Civ5. Boy, do I feel embarassed!

No, it didn't fix all the issues. But many of the issues you speak were indeed fixed.

I do not mind you criticizing the game. Hell, I don't mind anyone criticizing the game. But you could and should update your criticism when changes to gameplay are already in effect.

 

[Civsassin]

@Deep Blue
Bandobras Took was correct. He didn't say overexpand until your economy was in ruins; he said expand as quickly as possible. They are two different things. I also played CiIV for a long time, and I understand the need to expand and the penalties for doing it too quickly.

The upcoming patch is going to slow overexpansion / ICS significantly. New cities will get 0 gold and only 1 production both a -1 reduction. Trade route income is now going to be based on the size of the capital with modifiers for the size of the city that you connect. Colleseum happiness has also been reduced. It is going to take a longer time to make new cities both productive and profitable, while all you get in return in the short term is unhappiness at the outset and more as it grows with less opportunity to fix it.

The system that CiV uses is perfectly fine; it just needs to be balanced as they are doing. Add where necessary (production in this patch, and happiness in the last), and remove where needed (food from CS to capital).

It baffles me why everyone wants to compare CiV to CiIV. They are two completely different animals. CiIV was a mature product that had MANY patches and two quality expansion packs. CiV has been out for 4 months and has had two quality patches and NO expansion packs. Talk about CiV; how it is improving; how the developers are responding to feedback; how they recognised the areas in which they need to improve... I could go on. If you like CiIV so much, play it, but CiV is not nor ever will be CiIV.

 

[Bibor]

In Civ4 it was a balance between fast expansion and Economy and it was all about timing of settling new cities:
expand to 4 cities->Currency Tech->expand to 6 cities->Cottage Spam->Expand to 8 Cities->Build Markets->expand to 10 cities->Build Banks->Expand to 12 cities ..... and so on.

The Process in Bold makes sense to me!

So still:
In Civ4 High Difficulty -> The easiest way to lose is to expand too fast.
In Civ5 -> It doesn't matter because the Economy Does Not Exists !

In Civ5 it is a balance between fast expansion and larger already established cities, and it was all about timing or settling new cities:

Expand to 4 cities -> hook up resources -> Expand To 6 cities -> Build Circuses -> Expand to 8 cities -> Build Colliseums -> Expand to 10 cities -> Trade away surplus resources -> Expand to 12 cities.... and so on.

The process in Bold makes sense to me! Because money is used on other things.

So still:
In Civ4 High Difficulty -> The easiest way to lose is to expand too fast.
In Civ5 -> The easiest way to loose is to expand too fast (because your cities will stagnate forever).

 

[Bandobras Took]

There is no easy way to lose in CIV5

I know somebody was going to do that when I gave them such a straight line.

More seriously, I think that's one problem with Civ 5. Unhappiness is annoying, but it can't make you flat-out lose if you don't handle it. That'll only happen when newly founded/captured cities actually revolt and become different Civs with all your technology if your happiness becomes too low.

 

[Bandobras Took]

I played Civ 4 for long time and I even have some hall of fame scores so I am telling you when you expand too fast in Civ4 before your economy settles down you will lose on high difficulties. On Civ4 Deity if you try to settle 4 cities early then you become totally bankrupt with no research, less units, unhappy empire and many troubles that will kill your game.

In Civ4 it was a balance between fast expansion and Economy and it was all about timing of settling new cities:
expand to 4 cities->Currency Tech->expand to 6 cities->Cottage Spam->Expand to 8 Cities->Build Markets->expand to 10 cities->Build Banks->Expand to 12 cities ..... and so on.

The Process in Bold makes sense to me!

So still:
In Civ4 High Difficulty -> The easiest way to lose is to expand too fast.
In Civ5 -> It doesn't matter because the Economy Does Not Exists !

Nothing you said in any way contradicts what I said. It's just less accurate.

And as I mentioned in responding to Sulla's post, the key was that in Civ 4, the gold penalty to city maintenance hurt your research rate and could therefore cause you to lose. The Unhappiness penalty to growth in Civ 5 doesn't really hurt your research rate in the same manner. When they make it so that your empire actually falls apart with unhappiness, with the newest cities going their own way first, then it will be a limiting factor that can make you lose the game.

 

[Sneaks]

Sulla makes several very valid and accurate points, which are not negated in any way by the latest patch. I will touch on several of them here:

Research Agreements are a great idea but so far tend to be poorly implemented for several reasons. Players have the capacity to actively choose their desired tech, allowing for science beelines based entirely on gold. Given that costs hardly scale well, it adds to the imbalance.

Great Scientists being able to grant any free tech is still imbalanced. The fact that scientist slots are not available til Education does not mend this. In fact, it represents the worst kind of patching. Instead of addressing the problem (a broken unit mission), Firaxis instead limited access to it. This would be akin to me complaining to my landlord that my air conditioner is way too cold, and his solution being stopping the thing from turning on unless the temperature is at least 100F.

Maritime CS are still overpowered even with the "nerf" to them. The problem lies in the fact that the bonus scales infinitely laterally. Free food in every city is a pretty good reason to make more and more cities. Lessening the amount of free food still does not address the underlying issue of the lateral scaling.

It is very true that you can win Deity in any manner of ways, and pretty easily at that. The 2 EASIEST ways, however, are ICSing or conquering the incompetent combat AI. Sulla never claimed this was the only way to victory, but is accurate in saying it is still the easiest.

This brings us to the issue of Global Happiness as a limiter. As of right now, happiness does not work for 2 key reasons. 1 being that it is still possible to found limitless cities and not take an empire-wide happiness hit with some very basic buildings and a policy or two. 2 being that the AI CANNOT PROPERLY HANDLE THE SYSTEM. The AI is given nearly limitless happiness on every single difficulty level because it is incapable of planning ahead. Because it is given limitless happiness, it can ICS all it wants, conquer as much as it wants, and get tons of golden ages. This leads further down the slippery slope of limitless AI gold, etc. By creating a system for limiting growth and then creating a separate set of rules for the AI, you lead to a situation where the player becomes quite unhappy with the AI.

As alpaca's PlayWithMe has shown, there are clear alternatives to global happiness, the most obvious being some form of city maintenance.

What bothers me about this patch is the number of cheap and easy "fixes" that do nothing to actually fix underlying problems. Changing city spacing to 3 is the biggest cop out of the entire patch. Does it resolve the AI's lattice-like thinking when choosing new city plots? No. Rather than creating a better plot weighting system which would allow close city spacing if it made sense, we end up with an AI city grid spaced a bit wider. In fact, pretty much zero things in this patch address underlying AI mechanics in a meaningful way. Before anyone brings up the cascading denouncement thing, this was already tweakable by editing about 3-4 numbers in an XML file. The underlying algorithms remained the same.

It really comes down to that for a lot of people unhappy with this iteration of Civ. The game is missing a lot of what players loved about IV, and many people could get past that. The problem is the things that ARE implemented in this game have been implemented poorly, with an AI incapable of using them well.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Intentions don't implement features to the game, but with time, money and talent intentions can be an enabler.

Sure enough, my ca$h has been invested on the right horse.
Let the race begin.
But, we're all jumping the gun - it seems.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

One thing is missing: remove the fantasy Natural Wonders please!

No way, Jose. If O_p_t_i_o_n_a_l, i might bend a little like i did with Policy Savings.
We want MORE Natural Wonders, less fantasy possibly.

 

[Bibor]

Maritime CS are still overpowered even with the "nerf" to them. The problem lies in the fact that the bonus scales infinitely laterally. Free food in every city is a pretty good reason to make more and more cities. Lessening the amount of free food still does not address the underlying issue of the lateral scaling.

1 being that it is still possible to found limitless cities and not take an empire-wide happiness hit with some very basic buildings and a policy or two.

How many maritimes you need to befriend to actually "feel" the benefit? What, 1, 2, 3 food per city is a game-breaker?

I still want to see that "infinite city sprawl" many people are so vocal about.

A pop 4 city with 2 maritimes (2 food) will work 4 tiles. Lets say 3 of these tiles are grassland trade posts (6 gold), and one hills trade post (2 gold, 2 hammers).

Considering it will "hammer in" eventually (after a 100 turns or so) a library, marketplace, bank, university, colliseum, it will produce a grand total of 14 gold, 8 science and 4 hammers per turn. All these buildings cost 7 gold in upkeep so the actual production of such a city is



9 8 4

Granted, if you have 20 of these, that's 180 GPT and 160 SPT.

Clearly worth it

In other news, I can make that amount of money and science with 8 cities at around turn 180 on normal speed. And the science rate will just grow exponentially with minor investments to happiness buildings. Not to even mention the production rate of larger cities.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

What's happening to RA's, anyone knows?
Cuz, with such extensive techno_research fixes... i'd strike or try preventing some AI deals much more often than before. AI with AI is one thing, obvious exploits another.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Expand to 4 cities -> hook up resources -> Expand To 6 cities -> Build Circuses -> Expand to 8 cities -> Build Colliseums -> Expand to 10 cities -> Trade away surplus resources -> Expand to 12 cities.... and so on.

And you call this an Economy ?

The process in Bold makes sense to me! Because money is used on other things.

Happiness Economy makes Sense ?!
I never heard about Happiness Economy before Civ5, a new concept maybe but not a likable one and for me it does not make sense at all.

 

[NukeAJS]

Declarations of friendships/denunciations lasting just 50 turns is a great addition. It makes little sense for a denunciation in 2000 BC to last the entire game. Talk about non-fun.

Chinese got rightfully nerfed.

Russia got boosted big-time due to Krepost and minimum 2 (4 for Russia) uranium.

Tradition looks like it got boosted. Did it really need to be more powerful?

Liberty finally seems like it could be an option in non-ReX strats. The free worker policy could be a game changer. Boosting meritocracy, seems -- extreme? I think it was just right at .5 happiness a connection.

I'm disappointed that military caste didn't get a bump. Who has enough units to take advantage of that policy? Furthermore, if you have that many units to take advantage of that policy, you should be out busting skulls (RE - not parked behind city-walls).

Autocracy not getting a complete overhaul sucks but at least it's on the radar. Who really chooses Autocracy over Order anyways? Yeah your military will be better, but you'll be crushed by the weight of your own military success. Also, most of the policies are slightly better than terrible anyways. Although the initial -33% upkeep and -33% purchasing military is really nice. Fascism shouldn't be needed because you should be able to just capture additional resources. Populism is only cool if you are Japan. And Total War, while cancelling out the -33% combat strength due to a lot of unhappiness, is the only social policy that is 100% temporary.

I've also noticed a lot of these changes come directly or were heavily inspired by the many balance mods out there.

That's my 2cs

 

[Bibor]

And you call this an Economy ?



Happiness Economy makes Sense ?!
I never heard about Happiness Economy before Civ5, a new concept maybe but not a likable one and for me it does not make sense at all.

is being used as city-size, city-number maintenance part of the economy.

is used to pay for:
-building upkeep
-road, railroad network upkeep
-unit upkeep
-research agreements
-resource trades
-city states
-AI bribes
-tile purchases
-rushbuys

Happiness, Culture, Science, Gold, Hammers. That's Civ5 economy. All this 5 makes the economy. How is that any different from CIV4? Just because they are divided doesn't mean they don't interact.

Okay, let me try again:

CIV4 economy:
Slider* + hammers + trade routes + buildings
happiness and health separate

Civ5
(Culture + gold + science)* + hammers + trade routes + buildings + happiness
no health, no espionage

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Changing city spacing to 3 is the biggest cop out of the entire patch. Does it resolve the AI's lattice-like thinking when choosing new city plots? No.

Disagree and here's why.

Quantity rather than limited balance between Human choice (made) and AI's capacity to counter-measure within an equal ruleset.
ICS is a spread of assets just because it is feasible within parameters designed to enhance specific conditions.
The distance is arbitrary if kept too low, but weighs in considerably more when values scale back at the number of actual available cities.
Need i remind you, maps are the physical potential for any sprawl. Restrict territorial grasp and you get domino effects. Don't and you solve nothing.

 

[Deep_Blue]

Okay, let me try again:

CIV4 economy:
Slider* + hammers + trade routes + buildings
happiness and health separate

Civ5
(Culture + gold + science)* + hammers + trade routes + buildings + happiness
no health, no espionage

my turn , Let me try again:

I said:

In Civ4 it was a balance between fast expansion and Economy and it was all about timing of settling new cities:
expand to 4 cities->Currency Tech->expand to 6 cities->Cottage Spam->Expand to 8 Cities->Build Markets->expand to 10 cities->Build Banks->Expand to 12 cities ..... and so on.

and you said:

Expand to 4 cities -> hook up resources -> Expand To 6 cities -> Build Circuses -> Expand to 8 cities -> Build Colliseums -> Expand to 10 cities -> Trade away surplus resources -> Expand to 12 cities.... and so on.

now compare between the two processes , and you can see that Economy is not involved in expansion in Civ5.

I know there are Hammers,Science,Gold,....etc in Civ5 which is obvious , But The whole Economy does not affect Expansion directly and does not affect research. Everything is related to happiness which makes the gameplay dull as in:
Expand to 4 cities -> hook up resources -> Expand To 6 cities -> Build Circuses -> Expand to 8 cities -> Build Colliseums -> Expand to 10 cities -> Trade away surplus

 

[Valkrionn]

I know somebody was going to do that when I gave them such a straight line.

More seriously, I think that's one problem with Civ 5. Unhappiness is annoying, but it can't make you flat-out lose if you don't handle it. That'll only happen when newly founded/captured cities actually revolt and become different Civs with all your technology if your happiness becomes too low.

I'm working on that, actually. In the meantime, I already have a Dark Ages modcomp (which I'll release finally once the patch comes out) that throws you into anarchy if you undergo extended periods of unhappiness. This can and will cause you to lose if it happens enough.


On the whole "3 tile spacing is a copout!" argument... No. No, it most certainly is not. It is something the game should have absolutely shipped with; Cities are able to work up to radius 3 now, so leaving that spacing as in Civ4 means you can settle within the workable radius of other cities. That was most certainly not the case in Civ4, so why is this change seen as a copout, exactly?


And Sullla, you are quite wrong about many things. Bibor has already stated why quite eloquently; Your arguments are based on outdated versions of the game. I would be quite interested to see if you could pull off anything close to your old games once the new patch goes live. Your entire argument about Happiness vs Maintenance essentially boils down to saying that new cities create immediate benefit, there is no time during which you have to pay for them, correct? This was true of the initial release, but it is far from true now.