New patch 20 December

[Riker13]

Still no SDK!

 

[Tempestfury]

Honestly, I really feel that people are judging the patch way, way too harshly. Just like player1 said, I think being are overestimating just how much can be done in 30’s days in order to overhaul the AI and fix the UI, stuff which people still have an issue with and completely tunnel vision on them, instead of looking at the changes themselves and judging them.

Plus, you know... it is December. It is 4 days till Christmas. I’m pretty sure Video Game Developers are allowed time off for Christmas in order to go visit their families and friends. They are people after all, not machines. I feel like people have been forgetting that.

I still laugh at comments about Civ 6 not being creative at all. Like, hello? Have you even PLAYED the game? Admittedly, I don’t know how many elements might have come from other titles, and weren’t just straight up created by them, but I still feel like it is a fantastic change from the previous titles.

Now, as for the balance patch itself. The main things to discuss is the Unique Districts Costing Population and Factory/Stadium stacking being eliminated. The former, I agree is an essential change, as the Unique Districts were quite simply far too powerful as they were then. Now, though, they are a lot more balanced, so there is going to hopefully be a lot more choice and flexibility in multiplayer. It’s not perfect or anything, but it should still help out quite a lot.

As for the stacking, being eliminated? I’m... torn. Districts and Wonders can take ages to build in the late game, and the Industrial Zone stacking means I can’t have 3 cities close to one another, each with a Factory to give one another a boost. On the other hand, it allows you to spread out easier and play to the land that’s around you properly. Plus it does mean that you can help specialise a city, have a ‘Production City’ that augments the other cities around it, so that they can focus on other districts, like science or culture.

 

[V. Soma]

Well, it is not the patches themselves that they done in 30+30 days that are to be criticized harshly,
but the AI they dared to release in the very beginning...

The AI as of now makes the game unplayable...

/oh yes, I haven't played the winter patch yet, but the patch notes has not a single word on combat AI... and not much else AI either/

 

[WileyWilson]

Honestly, I really feel that people are judging the patch way, way too harshly. Just like player1 said, I think being are overestimating just how much can be done in 30’s days in order to overhaul the AI and fix the UI, stuff which people still have an issue with and completely tunnel vision on them, instead of looking at the changes themselves and judging them. <snip>

Good post. In fact, whilst it may be ~30 days since the fall patch, it's not 30 working days, more like 23. That's even less time to fix stuff.

 

[narmox]

Have you used said keys? As soon as you give a command to the unit you skipped to, it skips back to the original unit that you passed on! You have to keep skipping away from it! Which is very annoying! I skipped past it for a reason...but I keep getting dragged back to it. Either they change that...or a wait command is very needed.

Whoa!

I have used those keys, although I have disabled auto-cycling quite a while ago so I have not noticed that behaviour!

When I skip to the next unit and give it orders, then I click the question-mark icon (or press enter in the case the question mark is the big icon rather than production/etc), it goes to the next one again, rather than going back to the previous one that I originally skipped.

 

[nzcamel]

Whoa!

I have used those keys, although I have disabled auto-cycling quite a while ago so I have not noticed that behaviour!

When I skip to the next unit and give it orders, then I click the question-mark icon (or press enter in the case the question mark is the big icon rather than production/etc), it goes to the next one again, rather than going back to the previous one that I originally skipped.

Well I'm glad it's working for someone
It is because I still have auto-cycling on then. But I should be able to. If I skip past a unit it should put it to the back of the queue and move to a different unit, until there are none left but the ones that have been skipped. That seems reasonable to me. So either that...or a wait command. This is just as fundamental as the alert fortification that we've finally got.

 

[narmox]

Well I'm glad it's working for someone
It is because I still have auto-cycling on then. But I should be able to. If I skip past a unit it should put it to the back of the queue and move to a different unit, until there are none left but the ones that have been skipped. That seems reasonable to me. So either that...or a wait command. This is just as fundamental as the alert fortification that we've finally got.

Absolutely agreed, they need to fix their unit cycling and their build completed notifications, among other things!

 

[Chysp]

Yup, the unique district nerf does affect England. This probably makes them the weakest civ we have in the game now - the 'free' dockyard was the only decent thing they had

 

[Siptah]

Yup, the unique district nerf does affect England. This probably makes them the weakest civ we have in the game now - the 'free' dockyard was the only decent thing they had

really? I don't think so.
The free unit still is a major bonus when you are playing aggressive / colonizing a lot of land.
The Sea Dog is still incredible, despite many people don't use it.
6 artifact museums that are automatically themed are still awesome.
The RND still gives it's gold bonus for every other RND built on other continents and is still half priced. It could use another buff - but that nerf alone does not make England go from one of the better civs to the weakest.

 

[Chysp]

really? I don't think so.
The free unit still is a major bonus when you are playing aggressive / colonizing a lot of land.
The Sea Dog is still incredible, despite many people don't use it.
6 artifact museums that are automatically themed are still awesome.
The RND still gives it's gold bonus for every other RND built on other continents and is still half priced. It could use another buff - but that nerf alone does not make England go from one of the better civs to the weakest.

I've had games where the free unit is helpful, but its incredibly situational and depends a lot on the map.
The Sea Dog is a decent unit, but it comes too late and is in an awkward position on the tech tree. I've still found it to be quite buggy as to whether it even captures the other naval units, and at the moment, naval warfare is generally weak, so in most of my playthroughs, I've found the Sea Dog to be far less helpful than it should be.
The museum bonus WAS good, but the nerf to the dockyard limits your ability to even build theatre districts. The theatre district is one of the lesser important districts, so now having to prioritise the dockyard AND the theatre district is just too costly when you want to be focusing on industrial districts and campuses.
Having that free dockyard was the best thing for England, because it gave the civ a niche in that free trade route that then provided internal food and production that it desperately needed. Losing that is a big direct loss, but it's compounded by the additional indirect nerf to British Museum and the need for an additional district slot to house museums.

 

[LDiCesare]

Honestly, I really feel that people are judging the patch way, way too harshly. Just like player1 said, I think being are overestimating just how much can be done in 30’s days in order to overhaul the AI and fix the UI, stuff which people still have an issue with and completely tunnel vision on them, instead of looking at the changes themselves and judging them.

I, and I think others, am concerned with the fact that the patch doesn't make an unenjoyable game worth playing. I'm looking at the patch notes because I have some hope that maybe one day they'll tackle the AI. If they don't, all that work they do is just useless as far as I'm concerned. I'm not in any hurry, but truth be told, they probably wanted to get a DLC out before christmas so peoplewould buy it when they have money for gifts. So they focused on milking consumers instead of fixing broken stuff. So they may do some changes, and some changes may be good, but they remain irrelevant for people who stopped playing because the game is too easy and/or not ergonomic enough.
The game balance changes miss the point that you couldn't build anything at any decent rate without lotsof factories. They made some late game stuff cheaper, but everything else suddenly became more expensive. I won't play it in this state, but I'm afraid the game will be even more slow with little or nothing to do while you're waiting for your production to complete during mid/late-game. That'll be even worse with slower techs, since you'll get to choose one less often.They should have added techs and kept the pace at which they are researched instead of just slowing down the game.

 

[RohirrimElf]

LDiCesare,

For me personally i hoped to see changes in technology (slowing down progress), production (boost production/reduce costs), and warmongering mechanic.
The first two are adressed but i would have liked see see bigger changes. I Still have serious issues with the warmongering mechanic being to harsh/schizofrenic.
But it is a good sized patch. Not a gamechanger but it is what i would have expected.
Earth standard size will keep me busy for an additional 2/3 full campaigns do this month

 

[Janskey]

So, did they or did they not fix the previous built bug?

Seems to work correctly if the last item built was a district, otherwise not.

I loaded an old Kongo save to see if Relics + Reliquaries is still broken. It is.

 

[nzcamel]

I, and I think others, am concerned with the fact that the patch doesn't make an unenjoyable game worth playing. I'm looking at the patch notes because I have some hope that maybe one day they'll tackle the AI. If they don't, all that work they do is just useless as far as I'm concerned. I'm not in any hurry, but truth be told, they probably wanted to get a DLC out before christmas so peoplewould buy it when they have money for gifts.

You sound like you're in a hurry. I kinda like the way they're making changes every month, even if I'd like some things prioritised over others. I suspect that the big AI changes will come a bit further down the track, as they have to make sure it is responsive to everything else. I'm pretty comfortable that Firaxis is very keen to produce a good product for us all! I'd be more concerned if they had rushed an AI fix, when it is the hardest thing they have on their plate.

 

[RealAntithesis]

On the plus side, the message icons on the bottom right now appear to be more responsive (whereas before I had to mouse in and out of them multiple times to get them to open up).
On the downside, I'm sure this wasn't the case before, but all deployed fighters on screen are now in the exact same animation state - as in they are circling around their hex tile synchronised with each other. My eyes are getting funny just looking at a screen full of fighters doing a synchronised clockwise dance.

The last-built bug doesn't appear to have been fixed - at least in my game (which I'm continuing pre-patch). A city just built an archeologist after building an Archaeological Museum, but the banner at the top still says the museum was "completed".

 

[RealAntithesis]

Oh wait, there might be a bug with a mod I have installed (or because I'm continuing a game from before the patch), because this can't have slipped past Firaxis: all my resource icons on map are now displayed with 3 other resource icons, as if the images are arranged in a grid, but the game was taking the wrong square region to display on screen. Bugger, looks like I might need to start a new game...

 

[Stilgar08]

to me the most annoying bug is the previous-build-bug - and it has yet to be verfied this has been adressed by this patch or not... (Don't have time to play right now...) Anyone can confirm???

Another one I'm feeling much annoyed by is the pin-bug because I like to use pins... I'm pretty sure this is not the highest priority though...

Concerning the restrictions introduced to production-spread and amenity-spread - I don't understand the whining, especially when it comes to people who didn't play the patch yet or had the chance to test it...
The lesser you want to have a certain district in all of your cities but focus on specializing each city the better IMO.

This "underwhelming" patch comes with the DLC (which I personally find more underwhelming TBH - szenarios *yawn*) - I would have expected more progress concerning UI but obviously this wasn't the focus of the patch. In general the patch leads into the right direction...

They work on the AI but it's not enough - granted. But they work on it...

Seems to me like adding sentry mode was the only major change they added. The bug fix list seems extremely underwhelming given 30 days. They couldn't fix previous build? How hard could that have been? And calling it the winter patch makes my really skeptical how many patches we will get in the next 60 days.
Correction, they did finally fix previous build, but did not list it in the patch notes. Maybe someone could gather the list of missing patch notes for fixes.

Sentry mode surely is a VERY good change!
I'm quite sure, dlc-release a few days before christmas determined the deadline - everything finished by that date made it into the patch, everything else didn't... IMO that's why the patchnotes seem to be a bit "disorganized" and "collected" if you know what I mean.

I thought the stacking bonuses were super neat. I loved placing a ring of 5 industrial zones that would transform a central city into an industrial colossus. I really think this mechanic was a winner--it called for tougher decisions in district placement (do I place this IZ where it can affect a fourth city, or do I place it where I get the best adjacency bonus?) and was very satisfying when you got a good grid of industrial zones. It was also fresh and unlike anything a previous Civ game had ever had, as far as I can recall anyway. I'm sad to see it go.

To me it makes district placement even more of an important decision - And I likely won't build IZs in every City anymore. Which is good!
Furthermore adding pop-reqs for unique districts will help to think twice which city REALLY need IZs...
Commercial Hubs next, please!

I tend to neglect Entertainment districts often (Am I alone with that?) and seldom build them regularly until quite late in the game so amenity-spread won't have that much impact I assume...

seems to me that they got scared of this mechanic and quickly reverted back to the hated Civ5 model of few cities. If you combine this new nerf with the amenities model of 4 cities for your whole empire, you can tell what their intention seems to be

I disagree - There's not any intention to be seen to get back to the 4 cities-model of CiV. I would HATE that! All it means is think twice which city really need an IZ. Why on earth should you want to build less cities just because the 6-tile-spread of the IZ only refers to the highest yielding IZ?

And now that you get only the highest bonus, how is the UI going to meaningfully present that restriction to the user?
Stinks of desperation fixes for an underlying flawed/broken design; the implications of which haven't been completely thought through.

I don't really understand where you are coming from. If I'm right and we stop building IZs in all our cities the problem simply doesn't occur. If I'm wrong and we all continue to build IZ-carousels the cities get the highest available yield the can get from any of them - it just doesn't cumulate anymore...
Stinks of nothin' - just a balance-question...

Honestly, I really feel that people are judging the patch way, way too harshly. Just like player1 said, I think being are overestimating just how much can be done in 30’s days in order to overhaul the AI and fix the UI, stuff which people still have an issue with and completely tunnel vision on them, instead of looking at the changes themselves and judging them.
Plus, you know... it is December. It is 4 days till Christmas. I’m pretty sure Video Game Developers are allowed time off for Christmas in order to go visit their families and friends. They are people after all, not machines. I feel like people have been forgetting that.
I still laugh at comments about Civ 6 not being creative at all. Like, hello? Have you even PLAYED the game? Admittedly, I don’t know how many elements might have come from other titles, and weren’t just straight up created by them, but I still feel like it is a fantastic change from the previous titles.
Now, as for the balance patch itself. The main things to discuss is the Unique Districts Costing Population and Factory/Stadium stacking being eliminated. The former, I agree is an essential change, as the Unique Districts were quite simply far too powerful as they were then. Now, though, they are a lot more balanced, so there is going to hopefully be a lot more choice and flexibility in multiplayer. It’s not perfect or anything, but it should still help out quite a lot.
As for the stacking, being eliminated? I’m... torn. Districts and Wonders can take ages to build in the late game, and the Industrial Zone stacking means I can’t have 3 cities close to one another, each with a Factory to give one another a boost. On the other hand, it allows you to spread out easier and play to the land that’s around you properly. Plus it does mean that you can help specialise a city, have a ‘Production City’ that augments the other cities around it, so that they can focus on other districts, like science or culture.

Thanx Tempestfury - Exactly!
Just before the patch came out tonight (europe here) many were angry stating - "They shouldn't dare to make a dlc without a patch" "make a patch first and fix the damn game" "Hopefully it's not only a mac-patch" "I assume it will focus solely on MP" "If it's not about AI it's useless"
Now we get about 800MB (?) of improvements and it's the usual whining again...

Well, it is not the patches themselves that they done in 30+30 days that are to be criticized harshly,
but the AI they dared to release in the very beginning...
The AI as of now makes the game unplayable...
/oh yes, I haven't played the winter patch yet, but the patch notes has not a single word on combat AI... and not much else AI either/

I'm quite certain AI won't be much better combatwise after this patch and I have to play the patch in order to see if the trade- and other AI-improvements really help. The combat AI surely is the biggest issue of ciVI and I hope they'll adress it asap. But the game is not unplayable, not the least! It's just...not the competition I have hoped for...and in that regard almost like all the other vanillas of the civ-franchise...
Reading the patchnotes it seems to me this patch wasn't focused on better AI at all, they are rather still in the bugfixing/balancing-mode...

Next steps to me would be preferably:
SDK and opening of Steam workshop to get decent mods (UI mainly because I have my doubts Firaxis' gonna fix it...)
AI-improvements

 

[Lights]

Yup, the unique district nerf does affect England. This probably makes them the weakest civ we have in the game now - the 'free' dockyard was the only decent thing they had

Lol no. Now that you don't need to stack factories your first 2 Districts will be always Dockyard and Commercial hub.

 

[Athmos]

Does anyone actually test how factories/zoo work ?
Do you get the bonus from the one in the city PLUS the highest regional one, or only the highest regional one ?
If we get both, I think it will still be best to build IZ almost everywhere given the huge production cost of everything in the late game, whatever you're aiming for production was already the bottlneck. Everything will just get even slower in the phase of the game that already was the most grindy. If we don't, well, we'll sure have more room for other districts, we just won't have enough production to build them in time to matter.

 

[Athmos]

To me it makes district placement even more of an important decision - And I likely won't build IZs in every City anymore. Which is good!
Furthermore adding pop-reqs for unique districts will help to think twice which city REALLY need IZs...

I disagree. Until now, you had to think carefully were you put you first cities, and make important decisions because there is a tension between early game benefit (optimal adjacency bonus) and late game benefit (optimal overlap bonus). This will go entirely from the game, since getting a single IZ to overlap with each city is trivial, and doesn't require any planing at all. I think even in my very first game where I didn't know about overlap from the start, most cities benefited from 2 to 3 other IZ, without any forward thinking.
Maybe you didn't take the overlap into account with your city, but it is still one less layer of planing for everyone that did.