New Beta Version - August 5th (8-5)

[BiteInTheMark]

It wasn't accidental. It's right there in G's 07-17 patch notes:

       Ethiopia:
            UA: removed +1 faith on SR
            UB: culture mod now 25% (was 33%), faith yield now +2 (was +3)

G didn't update the UA text though, and some players pointed out that the UA says it gives +1 to SRs, but doesn't.

So G either forgot that was an intentional change and, in his confusion, restored the +1 on SRs rather than change the text, or he decided he didn't like dropping the +1 on SRs after all and reverted it.
Either way, +1 on SRs is back:

INSERT INTO Trait_YieldChangesStrategicResources
    (TraitType, YieldType, Yield)
VALUES
    ('TRAIT_BONUS_AGAINST_TECH', 'YIELD_FAITH', 1);

In the last time he really often mentioned, that something happened "accidentially", like growth modifier for positive happiness beeing +10% instead of intendend +5%. Mysterious.

 

[Legen]

Why do I feel that Progress got nerfed a bit too hard? The changes to settler costs will already lessen the number of cities you can grab. Less cities won't affect Tradition as much while Authority encourages you to take foreign cities by force. Are the nerfs to Expertise and Equality really necessary when grabbing more cities is made tougher for Progress?

Seems overkill to me as well. What put Progress ahead was the happiness situation in the first place.

And extra 5 culture on Expertise was meant to make up for the loss of food yields in a previous patch. If the culture is to be reverted back to 10, it should at least compensate the food yields with something else, like gold or GAP.

Id prefer if Great Admirals wouldnt lose a charge, but instead lose your ability to discover new luxories when you first heal your fleet, and keep the 2 repair fleet charges.
Because I think now discovering a new luxory > a single fleet repair

If the second repair charge is being removed, might as well merge the repair with the luxury discovery.

 

[andersw]

Wait wait, are we back to Civ4?
I lost a pop when settler was done! (double checked with reload to see that nothing was wonky)
This makes settler production very severe.

 

[Mitch.sp]

If the change about settler decreasing pop is here to stay, what about allowing growth while building. It's doable/interesting?

 

[CrazyG]

Yep 4 pop in a low food start will likely force tradition opener.

You can take tradition to get to 4 pop, but then you lose a population when the settler is built, meaning you only have 1 culture per turn from your social policy, so you either skip settlers or fall way behind in culture. Then you wait 14 turns to grow again, just to build another settler (is 2 settlers by turn 45 that crazy?) only to learn that the AI has forward settled you, oh and you lose another population putting you back to 1 culture from social policies. Its a lose-lose situation, maybe authority can pull it out?

The right play on this land isn't tradition, its to restart the game, its dramatically more difficult than any other start position, going directly against the goals of VP. If settlers are going to cost a population, the requirement of 4 population is totally unnecessary.

 

[amateurgamer88]

If you go Progress, your capital won't be growing because you lose 1 pop every time you get a Settler and you aren't likely to build Settlers outside your capital due to pop requirements and the growing amounts of production cost. Without your capital growing much, you are getting less yields overall and the capital takes much longer to grow to a decent size. In the meantime, it takes longer and longer to get Settlers so even something like 5 extra cities can take up a lot of turns that can be used for infrastructure. In the meantime, happiness for wide empires is also hit harder with less happiness per luxury and the scaler at 5 cities (a big achievement at this point). I thought the previous version was might to help wide playstyle more but this recent version seems to nerf Progress into the ground with these changes and the policy changes. Did I miss anything?

 

[andersw]

Well flat land starts for capital became a lot better.
Need all food I can find in the early game.

 

[Txurce]

Well flat land starts for capital became a lot better.
Need all food I can find in the early game.

For the current version of the patch, anyway. This issue will be adjusted.

 

[Legen]

Just experimenting a bit with Progress and it's noticeable how the tree feels slow. Long before you get to Expertise and Equality, you're already having a hard time getting enough cities settled to justify taking the tree. Carthage, which is Progress oriented, can make it work, but this civ isn't snowballing as it used to, and feels more like it's just doing a bit better than a generic civ picking Tradition. It's just wrong for such an earlygame civ.

One side effect is that anyone trying to settle fast in this patch is better only making setlers from secondary cities if they have any pretense of competing for wonders. Producing settlers in the Capital eliminates your chances at that.

The gold cost increase is also quite a hit, given that Progress tends to have more gold than the other two trees. It's also going to affect Freedom for sure.

Even without the Expertise and Equality nerfs, my impression so far is that Progress got way overnerfed. This tree is just very sensitive to how much we allow expansion through happiness and settling mechanics, and I don't think Progress was in unbalanced state two patches ago. The issue we were discussing back then was just unhappiness from people growing too much by midgame or so, usually from warmongering; we weren't dealing with Tradition-Progress-Authority balance.

In terms of happiness and settling mechanics, I prefer the july 17th patch with the july 29th modifications to Public Works and Wonders, so that people caught in a Malthusian trap can fix the situation they put themselves into. I don't think we needed all the other happiness and settling changes.

 

[Txurce]

Just experimenting a bit with Progress and it's noticeable how the tree feels slow. Long before you get to Expertise and Equality, you're already having a hard time getting enough cities settled to justify taking the tree. Carthage, which is Progress oriented, can make it work, but this civ isn't snowballing as it used to, and feels more like it's just doing a bit better than a generic civ picking Tradition. It's just wrong for such an earlygame civ.

One side effect is that anyone trying to settle fast in this patch is better only making setlers from secondary cities if they have any pretense of competing for wonders. Producing settlers in the Capital eliminates your chances at that.

Did two quick starts and can confirm both points (using Carthage and Netherlands).

 

[tu_79]

Don't know. Feels like the meta for early game has changed and no one wants to adapt.

If every player is losing a pop for each Settler, how can you be forward settled? More than before? It's a harder start for everyone, even authority needs to move farther to find targets. It might have changed some balance, but it can't be so severe.

 

[amateurgamer88]

Don't know. Feels like the meta for early game has changed and no one wants to adapt.

If every player is losing a pop for each Settler, how can you be forward settled? More than before? It's a harder start for everyone, even authority needs to move farther to find targets. It might have changed some balance, but it can't be so severe.

If the meta you're saying is one where Progress is much weaker than the other policy trees, then I'm certainly not one wanting to adapt to it. The changes hurt Progress the most as it's based on peacefully expanding. Tradition can actually do fine for quite a while with just the capital and, when it can handle it, expand a little afterwards. Regarding Authority, the extra territory is helpful since there are more barbarian camps to hunt down for Culture and eventually Science.

Where are the majority of Progress yields going to come from? Fewer cities means fewer city connections and less Science from Fraternity. Liberty and Organization gives benefits that scales with cities so less cities means they are less effective overall. Expertise isn't as helpful since less cities means less buildings can be built. Why would I ever go Progress if Tradition and Authority are just obviously better choices in most cases?

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Could we please..... please...... start making smaller steps to get to a balanced point???
I get bored of permanent bouncing between happy people throwing flowers on me and in the next patch they are hunting me with torches and pitchforks
If you are trying to get to the edge of a cliff, you didnt start running two meters in front of it.
Arnt progress nerf, empire modificator rise, population restriction for settler, cost increase for each settler enough to nerf wide play? Does it really have to cost population to get a settler?

 

[Stalker0]

If people are worried about progress I recommend doing some tradition and authority runs. Let’s see if the expansion is working with those, and then we can adjust progress as needed.

My only concern honestly is the scaling cost of settlers for number of cities. Nothing to do technically, I just don’t like the flavor feel of it. Losing a pop, makes total sense. Settlers hard to build when unhappy, makes total sense. Settlers cost more just because there are more cities...I have trouble accepting that one flavor wise. Not the end of the world though, I would put that in the same bucket as scouts with trailblazer moving faster than horses, it doesn’t really make sense but I just accept it and move on

 

[Deljade]

I've definitely noticed the "overkill" in these beta patches. First the happiness gets like 4 different changes to make it more lenient at the same times and it turns out to be too lenient. Now expansion and wide (especially progress) gets 5 changes that make it worse it won't be big surprise if it turns out peaceful wide playstyle is just not great now.
I think this is on purpose (especially considering it's a BETA patch) so people can play and get a feel for those changes so we can see what we should keep. Is this a good way to go about? Not sure. I'm afraid there might end up being too many little intricacies and mechanics going on in the end. Which may or may not be necessary for balance. But I've not been following the balance changes of this mod for long enough to tell for sure...
I do hope that we get the nice, stable, definitive patch release soon though, that's for sure!

 

[Gazebo]

If people are worried about progress I recommend doing some tradition and authority runs. Let’s see if the expansion is working with those, and then we can adjust progress as needed.

My only concern honestly is the scaling cost of settlers for number of cities. Nothing to do technically, I just don’t like the flavor feel of it. Losing a pop, makes total sense. Settlers hard to build when unhappy, makes total sense. Settlers cost more just because there are more cities...I have trouble accepting that one flavor wise. Not the end of the world though, I would put that in the same bucket as scouts with trailblazer moving faster than horses, it doesn’t really make sense but I just accept it and move on

All starts are showing to be a bit slower, with Progress starts the most stable 'mid/top pack' starts (unlike before where progress AI were often a full two policies and 3-5 techs ahead of non-progress by turn 125). If Progress feels slower, that's only in comparison to itself, not the other two branches - they're all performing fairly similarly in terms of potency. The key note is that Progress remains the least risky of the opening branches - Authority remains the most risky.

Please also note that the reason this and the prior patches exist as a 'beta' is because they're experimental. Not all changes will remain.

G

 

[BiteInTheMark]

@Gazebo, I want to ask something different. Ive played several matches in 6-2 and 7-29 and finished right now a game in 7-29. I get the feeling since the 6-2 patch, he AI is performing much worse than in the previous versions.
I overtake them now much earlier and easier even with only peaceful play, their cities are around 5 citizens smaller at turn 200-250 than in previous versions and in the game ive finished, the AI cities have grown maybe by only one citizen in the turns between 300-400.

Did you change anything bigger in the AI management or decision making? It looks like the AI sees growth already relative early in the game as harmful and thus loses the connection to the player in the mid of the game, making the late game far too easy.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

All starts are showing to be a bit slower, with Progress starts the most stable 'mid/top pack' starts (unlike before where progress AI were often a full two policies and 3-5 techs ahead of non-progress by turn 125). If Progress feels slower, that's only in comparison to itself, not the other two branches - they're all performing fairly similarly in terms of potency. The key note is that Progress remains the least risky of the opening branches - Authority remains the most risky.

Please also note that the reason this and the prior patches exist as a 'beta' is because they're experimental. Not all changes will remain.

G

I've played through 100+ turns in 2 different Emperor games using both India and China with a Tradition opener. Those 2 civs' early game is arguably affected more than any other with these changes, so it really threw me for a ride considering I had no idea about the loss of pop at first. Despite this, I was able to adjust on the fly and still make some decent gains the second time through (I scrapped India with initial frustration, but China game I took Beauty and managed to snag Henge/Pyramids/Artemis and refocus to settling when I wasn't losing out on WLTED bonuses). I still got my 5 cities out, but just in a different manner than usual. It was interesting to see how the pace of the game changed, but I can see how many people are rattled by these new mechanics.

 

[pineappledan]

This probably makes early warmonger strats a lot more valuable. Why settle when you can just ruin other people's starts, which are costing them so much?

 

[Rekk]

I'm fine with "lose 1 pop for a settler" assuming other changes go through to balance it.