New Beta Patch - April 7th (4-7)

[JamesNinelives]

I think God of the sea is still the strongest, the easiest to found with & most faith heavy pantheon in the game but it's balanced by the fact that it requires fishing boats -a one use only unit requiring a T2 tech- instead of workers, it really does not scale at all so it's just an early game pantheon to get a religion with, it's terrain dependent and forces you to settle at least 3 cities along the coast which messes with the strategic city placement to grab land or forward settle as you usually want to do in the early game.
The other one is God of open sky that i think it deserves a nerf, it generates a lot of relevant yields in the early game, it scales into mid game -especially the culture- quiet nicely and it boosts the early game economy like no other pantheon.
God of war generates a lot of faith for founding but it's one of the harder ones to use right now, unless your civ have an ancient UU, you are not really going to war in the ancient era after archer nerf.
Spirit of Desert and God of stars and sky also work but to a lesser extent.

Thanks! For anyone who wants to respond/join in I have moved this part of my discussion to the Pantheons general discussion because I thought it might be more relevant there ^^.

 

[John.B.C]

Last year in Jan/February somewhere there were some massive improvments to the tactical AI. Back then I was like, "wow this is so cool", and I thought it can't hardly get much better than that... But now over a year later, all I can say is: WOW! I'm so impressed with the tactical AI that I'm lost for words! I really love how it uses the pathfinders/scouts, killing traderoutes, capturing workers etc. America in my last game, landed "three explorers ready create havoc - luckily I had fastmoving troops that were able to quickly take care of them before they were to create a whole mess.

 

[MontyJava]

Alright, I see that everything I was asking for has already been included in the new patch. Think I'll start a new game today.

 

[JamesNinelives]

Alright, I see that everything I was asking for has already been included in the new patch. Think I'll start a new game today.

There is a bug with religious units that we can expect a hotfix for soon, so you may want to wait for that .

Edit: Hotfix is up now, go for it!

 

[andersw]

I think God of the sea is still the strongest, the easiest to found with & most faith heavy pantheon in the game but it's balanced by the fact that it requires fishing boats -a one use only unit requiring a T2 tech- instead of workers, it really does not scale at all so it's just an early game pantheon to get a religion with, it's terrain dependent and forces you to settle at least 3 cities along the coast which messes with the strategic city placement to grab land or forward settle as you usually want to do in the early game.
The other one is God of open sky that i think it deserves a nerf, it generates a lot of relevant yields in the early game, it scales into mid game -especially the culture- quiet nicely and it boosts the early game economy like no other pantheon.
God of war generates a lot of faith for founding but it's one of the harder ones to use right now, unless your civ have an ancient UU, you are not really going to war in the ancient era after archer nerf.
Spirit of Desert and God of stars and sky also work but to a lesser extent.

God of the sea sounds ok and I've played a bit with it (on emperor) going for great lighthouse.
I drown in food, get more than my happiness can sustain, this is an issue.
The gold output is good because I can go lighthouses and delay roads.
Water tiles means I dont have as many regular tiles, which is partly why I get fewer lux and hammer tiles in exchange of water tiles hence problem mentioned above.
I'm not a big fan, the jackpot is sea lux with a good amount of atolls but unless you play archipellago thats unlikely.

Open sky is SOOOO strong.
God of war depends on map settings, raging barbs and/or lots of space then barbs alone can feed you into a quick religion.
I've used spirit of the desert on occation, its strong in that you get faith and hammers without improving anything, but those starts with good enough desert tiles are rare (also game is not very willing to border expand on desert hills).

 

[Omen of Peace]

I finished my Egypt, King game on Standard map, Quick speed. I chose Quick to spend less time on it since it was primarily to test out my theory that Tourism has been over-nerfed.

It was an easy game. I did manage a Cultural Victory, on year 2001, which is much, much later than what used to be possible.
That's with fairly optimal play:
25+ Wonders, with the Cultural Heritage resolution to get more out of them
3 founded cities only + 2 puppets acquired along the way
Tradition/Artistry/Rationalism/Freedom*
Goddess of Beauty, Stupas and Symbolism in my religion - I didn't go for Sacred Sites this time around.
Using 15k+ worth of Faith on 4-5 Great Musicians (5 GM) in the very late game to tide over the remaining civ
I didn't try to pass Passport System (everybody hated the proposal), but at least Travel Ban was never in effect.

* Though Order is better than Freedom nowadays, Freedom ought to be better for Tall CV IMO, hence why I went with it.

Thoughts
The CV came after a DV could have happened, and only a few turns before a SV (hard to be sure exactly since I didn't beeline all SV techs and didn't spend my Faith on Scientists).
I think that's 1/ too late, 2/ a bit too difficult.
CV shouldn't require this much tech, these many Wonders, ...

And that was on King. On higher difficulties, the AI Culture bonuses would delay CV (so that I would have to switch to SV) or make it impossible.

Digging deeper:
- Base Tourism yields are too low. GW should be boosted to +5 Tourism at least.

- Instant yields have been overnerfed. Many times, I would get only half my per-turn Tourism as an instant bonus: since they don't happen every turn, that means they're fairly negligible.
I would propose instant yield to be at least 2x per-turn Tourism.

- In counterpart, the boosts from late-game techs could be lowered a bit. That would make influencing other civ a more progressive/smooth process, rather than a too-slow process for most of the game followed by a sharp spike at the end of the game.
I don't know the current values from Radio/Telecommunications/The Internet, so I can't know what changes to propose.

- Freedom should be the Ideology that boosts GW the most, not Order. If possible code-wise, Order could have a tenet that lowers the per-city penalty to Tourism (and perhaps makes the maximum penalty -50% instead of -75%), to make it easier to achieve CV for wide civ.

Of course, all the above will require testing...

Tagging @Stalker0 since he was interested in the topic.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I finished my Egypt, King game on Standard map, Quick speed. I chose Quick to spend less time on it since it was primarily to test out my theory that Tourism has been over-nerfed.

It was an easy game. I did manage a Cultural Victory, on year 2001, which is much, much later than what used to be possible.
That's with fairly optimal play:
25+ Wonders, with the Cultural Heritage resolution to get more out of them
3 founded cities only + 2 puppets acquired along the way
Tradition/Artistry/Rationalism/Freedom*
Goddess of Beauty, Stupas and Symbolism in my religion - I didn't go for Sacred Sites this time around.
Using 15k+ worth of Faith on 4-5 Great Musicians (5 GM) in the very late game to tide over the remaining civ
I didn't try to pass Passport System (everybody hated the proposal), but at least Travel Ban was never in effect.

* Though Order is better than Freedom nowadays, Freedom ought to be better for Tall CV IMO, hence why I went with it.

Thoughts
The CV came after a DV could have happened, and only a few turns before a SV (hard to be sure exactly since I didn't beeline all SV techs and didn't spend my Faith on Scientists).
I think that's 1/ too late, 2/ a bit too difficult.
CV shouldn't require this much tech, these many Wonders, ...

And that was on King. On higher difficulties, the AI Culture bonuses would delay CV (so that I would have to switch to SV) or make it impossible.

Digging deeper:
- Base Tourism yields are too low. GW should be boosted to +5 Tourism at least.

- Instant yields have been overnerfed. Many times, I would get only half my per-turn Tourism as an instant bonus: since they don't happen every turn, that means they're fairly negligible.
I would propose instant yield to be at least 2x per-turn Tourism.

- In counterpart, the boosts from late-game techs could be lowered a bit. That would make influencing other civ a more progressive/smooth process, rather than a too-slow process for most of the game followed by a sharp spike at the end of the game.
I don't know the current values from Radio/Telecommunications/The Internet, so I can't know what changes to propose.

- Freedom should be the Ideology that boosts GW the most, not Order. If possible code-wise, Order could have a tenet that lowers the per-city penalty to Tourism (and perhaps makes the maximum penalty -50% instead of -75%), to make it easier to achieve CV for wide civ.

Of course, all the above will require testing...

Tagging @Stalker0 since he was interested in the topic.

I kinda have to disagree with a couple of points here as i actually pursue CV most of the time and i find it much easier to achieve than pretty much every other victory condition .. playing almost exclusively on Emperor and sometimes Immortal even without a civ with strong culture i usually win around 1920~1950 without even touching the artistry branch and i'm sure i can do even better if i went Tradition instead of progress.
Trade routes, Religious beliefs esp. WOTP are extremely powerful making instant yield tourism from historic events look very tiny in comparison.
Founding a religion makes your game much easier in general.
One of the fun tactics to win a cultural victory is to win it through war; if you cannot get your tourism to eclipse their culture ... Just make sure they produce less culture, stealing greatworks from non capital cities hurts them a lot while boosting your tourism output at the same time, you are less likely to lose your spy in a non capital stealing greatworks btw.
Musicians after radio is researched usually generste enough tourism to flip the influence level to more than influential, use them for instant yields.
Micro managing great works rewards you nicely, the optimize button actually prioritizes theming bonus to the overall output which is ridiculous, it will fill puppet amphitheatres with grestworks just to get the theming bonus even if there are empty slots -single without theming bonuses- in holycity of a world religion that would yield even more culture and tourism than the themed works.
Diplomats ... A desperate move but it actually does something, if you plan on getting a big chunk of instant yields, make sure you have diplomats in the capital of civs you are least influential with.

 

[JamesNinelives]

in holycity of a world religion that would yield even more culture and tourism than the themed works.

I guess the auto-function doesn't account for things like world religion, it's just an auto-theme option or whatever.

 

[Omen of Peace]

I kinda have to disagree with a couple of points here as i actually pursue CV most of the time and i find it much easier to achieve than pretty much every other victory condition .. playing almost exclusively on Emperor and sometimes Immortal even without a civ with strong culture i usually win around 1920~1950 without even touching the artistry branch and i'm sure i can do even better if i went Tradition instead of progress.

Great feedback, thanks!
I'm surprised by it - I must play much worse than I thought.

Is there any common point to your games? Or you win via CV whatever the civ/policies/religion?
If so, that means the balance is actually great.
What are your other settings (map type/size/speed)?

Trade routes, Religious beliefs esp. WOTP are extremely powerful making instant yield tourism from historic events look very tiny in comparison.

It's true that I didn't go for WotP either. I think it was already taken, but I might also have been too focused on Divine Inheritance which pairs well with the kind of play I was going for.

Trade routes not being great is part of my feedback actually: they grant only a +10% bonus and instant yields that as I mentioned are very lackluster.

Founding a religion makes your game much easier in general.
One of the fun tactics to win a cultural victory is to win it through war; if you cannot get your tourism to eclipse their culture ... Just make sure they produce less culture, stealing greatworks from non capital cities hurts them a lot while boosting your tourism output at the same time, you are less likely to lose your spy in a non capital stealing greatworks btw.

I forgot to mention that I wanted to test out a mostly peaceful CV, because we know that warring improves your position, whatever the victory condition. I did declare two wars in the early game, but the first was to ensure I could get a good settle spot (next to Old Faithful), and the 2nd to raze an Assyrian city which was where I wanted to settle my 3rd city (belatedly, because I had been building several Wonders).
After that, there were only defensive wars.

Great advice on stealing GW. I tend not to use it that much because it's a lot of micro-management that I don't care about, but if AI put a lot of GW in secondary cities, I can definitely see how it would make a difference.

Musicians after radio is researched usually generste enough tourism to flip the influence level to more than influential, use them for instant yields.

I did use them, perhaps you missed it. After just Radio they would not have been good enough, but after Telecommunications + more Wonders + more digs they granted me 11k base Tourism, so with 1 or at most 2 per remaining civ they did tide me over.

Micro managing great works rewards you nicely, the optimize button actually prioritizes theming bonus to the overall output which is ridiculous, it will fill puppet amphitheat
res with grestworks just to get the theming bonus even if there are empty slots -single without theming bonuses- in holycity of a world religion that would yield even more culture and tourism than the themed works.

Please file a bug on Github!!
There were some issues in the past with e.g. puppets, so I filed a bug and it got fixed, but I imagine the problem is not that easy, so perhaps there are some cases it doesn't handle well (or there were some regressions).

Here again, I admit that I didn't micro-manage GW, except to make swaps to ensure the Louvre and Hermitage were themed.
I think the Louvre Tourism was nerfed too by the way, from 16 to 10??

Diplomats ... A desperate move but it actually does something, if you plan on getting a big chunk of instant yields, make sure you have diplomats in the capital of civs you are least influential with.

I used them as well, with some civ. It's just +10% but it doesn't require any micro-management.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

Great feedback, thanks!
I'm surprised by it - I must play much worse than I thought.

There is no way to go but up now

Is there any common point to your games? Or you win via CV whatever the civ/policies/religion?
If so, that means the balance is actually great.
What are your other settings (map type/size/speed)?

I actually manage to consistently win using Progress >> Fealty >> Imperialism/Industry and i'm sure i can do even better with Tradition or Artistry with ease on standard size maps, i usually play communitas, terra sometimes continents or continents plus, i kinda like epic speed but i don't think it matters outside of military advancements.

It's true that I didn't go for WotP either. I think it was already taken, but I might also have been too focused on Divine Inheritance which pairs well with the kind of play I was going for.

WOTP puts an impressive job at winning you a CV but it'it's not mandatory; funnily enough the last game i completed on the previous beta was thet celts going progress, fealty, Imperialism and religious beleifs were Hero worship, Mosques, orders, Symbolism, Knowledge through devotion.

Trade routes not being great is part of my feedback actually: they grant only a +10% bonus and instant yields that as I mentioned are very lackluster.

+10% might look like lackluster modifier but you usually try to stack as many moeifiers as possible for as long as possible so they actually add up into something meaningful.

I forgot to mention that I wanted to test out a mostly peaceful CV, because we know that warring improves your position, whatever the victory condition. I did declare two wars in the early game, but the first was to ensure I could get a good settle spot (next to Old Faithful), and the 2nd to raze an Assyrian city which was where I wanted to settle my 3rd city (belatedly, because I had been building several Wonders).
After that, there were only defensive wars.

Yoy don't have to set the world ablaze to win a CV but it's also less than optimal if you have a good standing army without getting any use out of it; sure it's up to you but roleplaying is not usually expected to perform as well as optimized play.

Here again, I admit that I didn't micro-manage GW, except to make swaps to ensure the Louvre and Hermitage were themed.
I think the Louvre Tourism was nerfed too by the way, from 16 to 10??

It's still a substantial bonus that adds up to other bonuses & gets multiplied.
One thing i forgot to mention is Boredom; raising the global median by being actually ahead in terms of not just tourism but also culture helps a lot, boredom in opposing empires is actuallt one of the strongest positive modifiers for tourism you can get.

 

[Omen of Peace]

How many cities do you typically end up with? (Founded vs Annexed vs Puppets)

+10% might look like lackluster modifier but you usually try to stack as many moeifiers as possible for as long as possible so they actually add up into something meaningful.

Of course.
I didn't mention it specifically, but I tried to have Open Borders with distant civ (which is more impactful with Artistry), etc...

Yoy don't have to set the world ablaze to win a CV but it's also less than optimal if you have a good standing army without getting any use out of it; sure it's up to you but roleplaying is not usually expected to perform as well as optimized play.

To clarify, this was not at all for roleplaying, but to test out the balance of "pure" Tourism (well, I did end up with 2 puppets anyway like I mentioned).

It's evident that warmongering helps CV, as it helps all victories. I think most would agree with the design goal that peaceful CV should be achievable, at least with some civ.

It's still a substantial bonus that adds up to other bonuses & gets multiplied.
One thing i forgot to mention is Boredom; raising the global median by being actually ahead in terms of not just tourism but also culture helps a lot, boredom in opposing empires is actuallt one of the strongest positive modifiers for tourism you can get.

Good point. I was doing alright on that front obviously with all my wonders / GW, though the bonus I got was very heterogeneous from civ to civ - but that is to be expected.
I feel Boredom is much less impactful than it was 1+ year ago, which is a good thing, because it could be too present before.

OK, now to wait for more feedback from other players.

I'll make another pass at it, but not right away.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I founded 4 cities + capital, annexed one city and had like 7 puppets only two of them were mainland cities i captured in an early easy war with Pictish warriors, the rest were late game . puppets mostly isolated islands or pure water cities spread around the map with no big enough navy to defend them.
Going to war even without conquering any city is actually a good idea to hinder your opponents and set them back in terms of overall yields, i think i can do one as a pure pacifist but sure it won't be as easy.