new patch feedback.

[tsuneomai]

hi
hm the game feels better to play. war seems more viable now and thus the game is lees sitting around and waiting and more exciting over all good job on that.
FOCUS fire seems to be bugged with new range horses. often you use the ability the general goes on cd but the horse archer did not attack. he still has movement and can attack just not boosted by the general now.
does not happen all the time often it works as intended.

i hope the time invested in overworking maps will pay out in the future. i think its not something we as players feel the most right now. unless the more camels was part of it then very much so.

cities seem to connect a bit better. there are more camels? but maybe i was just lucky. since those are my top 3 issues with the game. is war viable? (has to be on diety to keep up by taking another capital) can i build where i want to (camels)? and can i connect my or conquered cities for resources (trade range)?
they all seem better so its playable again. not the sweet spot yet

some major problems still remain i play on deity and marathon. second does not matter much i think:

its really not possible to compete over wonders. you have no way to influence building time. since you cant move around citizens and you have no workers to speed it up. red independent powers are kinda rare and often not close to be a reliable building boost. you can't do trade routes with your cities to enhance production.
all you can do is place citizens once they arrive. so its just random who builds the wonder depending on starting position and there are nothing you as player can do to speed it up once u started to build it.
workers allowed to improve more tiles than you had citizens so you could move them around. first you want to grow your cities faster then u want production for units/wonders.
now ur kinda forced to first take food and then production. some resources give both so they are nice. but still you cant actively speed up wonder construction if needed.
if we would overwork specialists to be movable like citizens were and give us one all 40 turns on marathon. also they would need to give 5 production on a barracks and 5 food on a garden etc. like this we could at least A LITTLE bit influence what yields our city produces at the moment. or pay gold to relocate one citizen. by overbuilding you can relocate some but not the important ones''

despite that you normally manage to build 1 wonder but after that it becomes super hard to build wonders and keep up with science/culture unless you are lovelace (she is just op)
and its even hard to keep up if you play isabella with a science or culture natural wonder while being silla that gets culture for kills or maya for additional science boost. even if you go writing soon and build a library get your second city and then maybe even conquer the third as a capital from another nation its hard to keep up science culture wise. the boost they have seems a bit to broken? and the speed at which they build wonders feels unreal.
before the last 2 patches 2-3 were possible. or even more in a good game. now u are behind in science and there is nothing u can do to change that. or even if you do all the things that add more science and/or culture they still produce more. sometimes even despite they produce less they seem to be ahead in tech/civics and all the wonders are already built when u start the research. then u check numbers and you are actually second in science. then u check who built it and it was not someone ahdead of you kinda weird.
sure its also fun to conuqer wonders but building them is a big fun part of the game.

war wise it seems to be no problem to keep up. i still think elephants and ships are a bit to strong compared to archers even if they have a 5 star general with +5 combat. and all the boost on the way.

connecting cities just with trade range and not with trader later on can feel very bad. being forced to build next to camels instead where you have good production still is kinda sad. i would prefer it to be a building chain to add more resources. some you can get over independant powers but not enough.

you can do war and still get enough influence. i still think razing cities should never! lower my influence income but should make ppl angry and diplomacy with them more expensive. like this you could still freely do diplomacy with your allies at all times.

the new independent powers are nice. i still think you should let us compete over city states somehow. ALSO if the enemy takes it over in a war you should be able to liberate it? now you have to conquer it and then raze it or keep it.
also peace negotiations still need some more options. lije resources or gold or ...you force them to convert into research agreements etc.

 

[tsuneomai]

oh and you changed unit cycle? if i do 1 step with an archer it cycles to the next unit very very very very very annoying ;D i hope thats a bug and not intended

 

[kotpeter]

I believe unit cycling can be disabled in options.

Regarding wonders, the issue can be related to game speed. Recently I finished a single player match against 7 deity ais with online speed, playing as Hatshepsut's Egypt. I was able to build 7 wonders in the Antiquity. But yeah, my setup has a few bonuses to assist with this.

 

[MutilationWave]

hi
hm the game feels better to play. war seems more viable now and thus the game is lees sitting around and waiting and more exciting over all good job on that.
FOCUS fire seems to be bugged with new range horses. often you use the ability the general goes on cd but the horse archer did not attack. he still has movement and can attack just not boosted by the general now.
does not happen all the time often it works as intended.

i hope the time invested in overworking maps will pay out in the future. i think its not something we as players feel the most right now. unless the more camels was part of it then very much so.

cities seem to connect a bit better. there are more camels? but maybe i was just lucky. since those are my top 3 issues with the game. is war viable? (has to be on diety to keep up by taking another capital) can i build where i want to (camels)? and can i connect my or conquered cities for resources (trade range)?
they all seem better so its playable again. not the sweet spot yet

some major problems still remain i play on deity and marathon. second does not matter much i think:

its really not possible to compete over wonders. you have no way to influence building time. since you cant move around citizens and you have no workers to speed it up. red independent powers are kinda rare and often not close to be a reliable building boost. you can't do trade routes with your cities to enhance production.
all you can do is place citizens once they arrive. so its just random who builds the wonder depending on starting position and there are nothing you as player can do to speed it up once u started to build it.
workers allowed to improve more tiles than you had citizens so you could move them around. first you want to grow your cities faster then u want production for units/wonders.
now ur kinda forced to first take food and then production. some resources give both so they are nice. but still you cant actively speed up wonder construction if needed.
if we would overwork specialists to be movable like citizens were and give us one all 40 turns on marathon. also they would need to give 5 production on a barracks and 5 food on a garden etc. like this we could at least A LITTLE bit influence what yields our city produces at the moment. or pay gold to relocate one citizen. by overbuilding you can relocate some but not the important ones''

despite that you normally manage to build 1 wonder but after that it becomes super hard to build wonders and keep up with science/culture unless you are lovelace (she is just op)
and its even hard to keep up if you play isabella with a science or culture natural wonder while being silla that gets culture for kills or maya for additional science boost. even if you go writing soon and build a library get your second city and then maybe even conquer the third as a capital from another nation its hard to keep up science culture wise. the boost they have seems a bit to broken? and the speed at which they build wonders feels unreal.
before the last 2 patches 2-3 were possible. or even more in a good game. now u are behind in science and there is nothing u can do to change that. or even if you do all the things that add more science and/or culture they still produce more. sometimes even despite they produce less they seem to be ahead in tech/civics and all the wonders are already built when u start the research. then u check numbers and you are actually second in science. then u check who built it and it was not someone ahdead of you kinda weird.
sure its also fun to conuqer wonders but building them is a big fun part of the game.

war wise it seems to be no problem to keep up. i still think elephants and ships are a bit to strong compared to archers even if they have a 5 star general with +5 combat. and all the boost on the way.

connecting cities just with trade range and not with trader later on can feel very bad. being forced to build next to camels instead where you have good production still is kinda sad. i would prefer it to be a building chain to add more resources. some you can get over independant powers but not enough.

you can do war and still get enough influence. i still think razing cities should never! lower my influence income but should make ppl angry and diplomacy with them more expensive. like this you could still freely do diplomacy with your allies at all times.

the new independent powers are nice. i still think you should let us compete over city states somehow. ALSO if the enemy takes it over in a war you should be able to liberate it? now you have to conquer it and then raze it or keep it.
also peace negotiations still need some more options. lije resources or gold or ...you force them to convert into research agreements etc.

Good points for the most part. Don't think playing marathon isn't making your games different. Every extra turn is another opportunity for the player to outmanuever the others, making war easier at the minimum. I recommend trying a standard speed game without longer ages if you want to have a good time in the zoo.

 

[tsuneomai]

I believe unit cycling can be disabled in options.

Regarding wonders, the issue can be related to game speed. Recently I finished a single player match against 7 deity ais with online speed, playing as Hatshepsut's Egypt. I was able to build 7 wonders in the Antiquity. But yeah, my setup has a few bonuses to assist with this.

hmmm yeah it could be speed related but my city had quite amazing production and plus wonder build bonus to finnish them in 26 turns instead of 40. still in those 26 turns if the enemy has many cities they will get more culture and start to build the others especially on huge maps.
if you have lovelace or himiko on the other continent they tend to have insane yields. sometimes you see enemies with 500 yields while you are at 100 that was gold;D but also in science and culture they are like 50 ahead. with you being pos 2 most of the times at least. they mainly ignore city limit while i dont. so they seem to get more yields that way
but i think its also leader dependent isabella does not bring much to the table if you have no second natural wonder close to +50% the wonder yields. but iplayed isabella 2 patches ago and when it comes to wonders you easily managed to build 4.-6 now its more often 2. unless you have a really strong game to get 4

but since war is valuable again i will figure out a way to push my science above them. but since they ignore city limit often they can have very high yields to fight. even with 6/5 settlements and 3 cities it is quite hard to combat on marathon. but yeah generally maya are strong since you can get ships early and get all the treasure tiles in ocean and can get a huge science/culture boost.

 

[CliffCo]

While i felt the game needed some tweaks to make it harder, i don't like the incresed gold cost to purchase buildings, i'm finding it slows down the development of my settlements too much, basically making me have to try and increase production and convert more towns to cities or specialize them.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I played a couple of games on immortal and the balance seems fine. In antiquity you go mostly with urban centers, switching between specialization and growth as needed. You add more cities only late in the age and only if you have unique districts to build.

Exploration is harder as you need 3 cities to reliable hit science legacy path, but by exploration you already build some edge over AI opponents (depending on your civ, leader and starting situation it could be different), so you use it. And by modern the edge is even bigger.

I usually play peacefully, though, so I rarely build military units other than garrisons and receive the rest from city-states and narrative events. I assume playing aggressive is more challenging now, but I think it's fine, because as far as I know, conquest was always more effective way to play. So now, the difference between it and peaceful is smaller.

EDIT: I haven't played Maya yet. They were probably hit harder than others, but that's just because their unique district is so strong you want as many of them as early as possible.

 

[UWHabs]

While i felt the game needed some tweaks to make it harder, i don't like the incresed gold cost to purchase buildings, i'm finding it slows down the development of my settlements too much, basically making me have to try and increase production and convert more towns to cities or specialize them.

I like that it makes you have to prioritize. You can't just pop a settlement down and buy all the warehouse buildings, then finish a tech and buy the new shiny building you unlocked in all your cities. Before, I'd easily be popping stonecutters in every town even if they have nothing relevant, especially once you have the attribute to get extra food on them.

I need to prioritize a little more, but I find that I'm not even making full use of my urban centres, I just don't have the cash flow needed to really get them fully up and running. I ended up with only 2 cities for most of antiquity (I converted one city late, with like 30 turns left in the age, just to knock down a couple buildings). For exploration I've had my 3 main production centres.

I think what I've discovered a bit is that chasing adjacencies for towns that I won't convert to cities is pretty useless. In that, part of me feels that I just need to even more specialize my towns, where the majority of my towns are farming or fishing (or hub towns if you have the connections). And that basically anything that has even a mild amount of space but doesn't fit into the above categories maybe is your urban centre. So what if you don't have a resource cluster for it - the difference between a +3 adjacency observatory and a +1 adjacency one once you get to the exploration age, and you're not multiplying them with specialists, is nothing.

 

[tsuneomai]

a short update. i think trade range needs to get essentially buffed.

if in turn 270 on marathon you cannot connect a city that is only 13 tiles away on a map that spans over 130 tiles then how do you expect us to conquer other cities further away and connect them to our empire?
also a town was 9 tiles away and connected. the town with 13 tiles did not also not when i made 2 towns into trade specialization.
so they are kinda usesless. despite they say +5 range and 9+5 would be 14 and its 13 tiles away yet did not work. also why do specialized towns not grow? that makes them useless later on. and the boni u get from specialization are quite... minor non impactful. like this it makes not much sense to even use them.

also culture balance is quite off. gold limits your cities to 2 or 3 so that equals 70-85 culture. meanwhile all AI has 100-200 with only 3 towns and 2 cities? like this they build all wonders. sure it might be to marathon speed but since we dont get all those free civs/technologies from independant power its hard to keep up if not impossible at this moment. science is better so at least when it comes to units you can keep up and go to war.
just that ..even if you take their cities why do they turn back into towns? and how are you supposed to connect further away cities without merchants? the conquered cities are quite useless then. trade range forces you to play in 1/10 th of the map. and sending your troops out of that range to conquer cities always seems like a bad choice since u can use the gold to buy settlers and upgrade them into cities instead of buying soldiers to take another capital.
and it feels kinda weird you make war so undesirable.
the influence loss! still my biggest issue with it. then you make it so we can't connect captured cities to our empire. AND you turn them back into towns so even after the unrest phase you need those 1500 gold to turn them back into cities. with an average of 50 gold per turn that takes 30 tuzrns until you can turn them into a city. even on marahton that is quite long.

i just feel like to over work map generation was the wrong priority while balance and player choices are in such a bad spot.
adding new independant powers was ok... but its not really a choice. once you play on higher difficulty efficency > decisions. what do i mean by that? if you add 30 different independant powers we will always pick the strongest first. and meta always will order them in a quite clear order of impact. the same is true for attribute points or which buildings we build. its not really a strategic choice you make in the game.
it is more...a choice you make once where you decide which options are the strongest. and then you keep them more or less.

the strategic decisions are where do i build my cities? what other civilization is the most dangerous and which one will i try to attack and eliminate early on to remove them from the game. In civ 6 we also had stuff like do i build a trader to connect my cities? or do i build a new city? if trader... do i need defensive soldiers to protect my cities and trade routes from barbarians? when do i build workers instead of buildings? and if so what resources do i upgrade or do i use them to speed up production? or do i make them for new cities. do i build a settler or do i rather build 3 slingers trying to steal one from the enemy and by that giving me one city more while them one less.
those are all macro decisions you removed in civ 7. so we never have the need to build anything else than buildings. and you gave us nothing new.
because without barbarians i do not need defensive armies.
without workers...that you built up to 50 times in a game there is not much else that i build than buildings. thats why we can build them all and its not really a choice. cause we have no no building options to consider.
traders are kinda useless and you maybe build ONE quite late to finnish silk road.
citiy positions are not really a free choice anymore since you kind of need camels and they need to be super close to connect with the really short trade range. that was fine on small maps but on huge ones the range is way way way to short!.
and camels are really bad. in civ 6 if you had no iron it was not so bad. you just adapted and built horses or spearman. if you have no camels? you dont get silk road points and will be weaker in the next age.
we can't steal settlers anymore that was a fun thing that could happen and boost your civ.
we have no way to decide what yields our cities produce so its just decided by randomness what resources you get.
also that all resources are visible and technology does not reveal them one by one to add more production to the city as the age goes on kinda removes that hurra moment if you find out your city has 3 iron mines or 2 coals and is a production powerhorse now. or just that you get horses early on to be able to trade.....yeah trade where is trade?^^

what buildings do i make? since there are no no building decisions thats also not really a choice but dictated by your strategy. a normal tierlist would be production > science > culture. maybe you focus culture over science or u try a nieche strategy focusing on food but thats it. with the balance atm wonders are often not an option because the AI has more culture than you can possibly have on diety/marathon.
also which tiles to improve with the new system is not really a choice. you just path to resources as fast as possible since they give the yields from the tile itself and then a second time via the resource. and here it will be mainly the same like buildings. food/prod > science > culture > food. well maybe one food early to grow faster.
in civ 6 it was an interesting macro decision. where you had to use the charges wisely while thinking ahead. like first i want to grow the city so we get some farmland. but the third charge we keep until we can produce mines. so we have some production once we discovered some buildings or wonders to build. or we get an early silk to trade it for gold to build units.
in civ 7 you can just direclty use all resources without technology. also the fact you cannot change citizens around makes many of them useless. while food is very strong at the start it has a high diminishing return and becomes totally useless at some point. and at this point we can no longer switch them to production or science. or also to compete for a wonder.
that is no decision any longer. since we cant change our citizens to have more production on the cost to grow slower. and to find the perfect balance for that and adapt it fluently to your needs was actually a fun part of the game. this also is gone. so its just randomly decided who gets to build the wonder. the city with more science/production resources. thats it.
also i would suggest to let towns build wonders. otherwise its impossible to compete for wonders like the pyramids that need a river. because until you built the town there...and then grew enouugh citizens to have production and resources there... .and have enough gold to transform it into a city.... the pyramids are long build. and even if not we have no workers that can speed it up.
yes sometimes u get 1 boost by a red independant power. thats it.

the attribute points are the same.
+1 science culture etc is totally useless. the strongest 3 are 50% less diplomacy 25 research 25 culture. all the others do not really matter and after that science + culture are just the best. so its also not really a strategic choice you change from play to play.

and civ 6 was agame that attracted strategic thinkers like zuckerberg. you can say vs him what u want but he is the head of a multibillion global company that has to do strategic decisions all the time. and in civ 6 you had those. in civ 7 most were removed. cities connect from alone but only on super short range. no trade routes to protect. no resource tiles to protect from barbarians (yes they were annoying but forces us to build other things than buildings. aka units) no workers. no flexibility with what my cities produce.
no free choice where to build. limited by traderange and the need for camels. also the choice becomes kinda useless when with agre transition the resources CHANGE what they give you. or even remove resources alltogether. you changed the unit thing in age transition. for me that was not the big issue. the biggest issue is that you build a city next to incense to have that science boost and then in the next age the city is useless cause it suddenly gives some faith stuff no one needs.

specialists are the next fail sorry. but they are not specialists all they do is culture/science. why can we not send them to tiles and then they boost what we produce there by 50%? then you could make them so we can send them around freely. so they could make the 5 production from my barracks into 7.5 or the 6 food from my granary into 9. just give us one all x turns then x+10. on marathon i would suggest first one turn 50 second one 120 third one 200. then you could also add a building chain so you get them faster or so they buff tiles by 60 70 80%. you could also make leaders that buff them etc. at least like this we would have some little choice what our cities produce.
also i think walls should be limited -> new building chain. 1 3 5 7 and never more. cities with 10 walls are like impossible to take if you can build an archer in 4 turns.
vs ai its easy but i mean now if you have a smart enemy ;D

and you can ignore my suggestions i just try to give you idea how we get more decisions back. eureka was also a decision that is removed. do i kill 3 barbarians to speed up technology xy or do i build a ship to get sailing faster? those mini quests were fun and gave you the possibility to reach certain techs faster than others no matter how your start city looked like.
and we definitely need some non building choices to build. cause settlers you buy with gold the same is true for units since you only need 4 to attack.
like i dunno architects that can speed up wonders. or new units that do creative things. the maya scout with traps are a good step in that directoin. you could add tar pits to give your archers burning arrows. or bomb squads that when they reach the city blow themselves up to remove the walls. i dunno ;D and new piece negotiations. like turning someone into a vassal like nation for some turns so they have to send you 10% of science culture etc and can't declare war on you. like 20 turns. or the ability to sell resources for gold.

but right now its often just sit around and build buildings...since cities to go to war to are to far away. and there is like nothing else to decide upon.

 

[JungleIII]

Yes, odd how the unit cycle was defaulted to on with the patch. Played a whole game before I turned it off in the setup...

Played with the new Napoleon because I wanted the the new one more movement point. I play Deity, long eras and Continents on small map. Wow, Napoleon changes the game.

Firstly, getting all the goodie huts with my three scouts is a breeze at plus one movement.

Secondly, in my game I had all the aggressive AI's next to me, and they are aggressive in their expansion. I never declared war on anyone, but one by one, they declared on me. Too bad for them. As each leader declared war, I get the General, catapult, archer, chariot and legion even though I only have two settlements and those techs aren't even available yet. One, by one, the each lose a settlement in battle and we go to peace with their surrender of a second city. Sucks for them, because now I have 6 new settlements and 3 new generals and accompanying units... no need to make them!

Then guess what? They all become allied and declare war again two more times in the Ancient era. Because they are allied, all three declare at once and I only get one general and accompanying units, but the whole era was a fighting match from beginning to end when next to grumpy guys.

For kicks, I did another game with Napoleon and found I was next to nice leaders and only had one leader declare war, so it really depends on who you get next too.

 

[tsuneomai]

yeah i also played the new napoleon everyone far away could not connect camels with only 13 tiles away ;D other towns at least 20 30 tiles away so war was kinda not an option-.- if you have enemy nearby its different. like the game is still balanced for small maps not huge ones.

also science seems to be pretty well balanced its culture that is totally off and makes it hard to compete. i cant have more than 3 cities with both culture buildings so its maxed out at around 70 and that includes an independent power where you chose the + culture on buildings or codexes. meanwhile even enemy AI with only 3 towns while you have 6 3 cities are at 100 culture for some reason ;D

 

[Krikkit1]

Yes, odd how the unit cycle was defaulted to on with the patch. Played a whole game before I turned it off in the setup...

Played with the new Napoleon because I wanted the the new one more movement point. I play Deity, long eras and Continents on small map. Wow, Napoleon changes the game.

Firstly, getting all the goodie huts with my three scouts is a breeze at plus one movement.

Secondly, in my game I had all the aggressive AI's next to me, and they are aggressive in their expansion. I never declared war on anyone, but one by one, they declared on me. Too bad for them. As each leader declared war, I get the General, catapult, archer, chariot and legion even though I only have two settlements and those techs aren't even available yet. One, by one, the each lose a settlement in battle and we go to peace with their surrender of a second city. Sucks for them, because now I have 6 new settlements and 3 new generals and accompanying units... no need to make them!

Then guess what? They all become allied and declare war again two more times in the Ancient era. Because they are allied, all three declare at once and I only get one general and accompanying units, but the whole era was a fighting match from beginning to end when next to grumpy guys.

For kicks, I did another game with Napoleon and found I was next to nice leaders and only had one leader declare war, so it really depends on who you get next too.

I think that’s bugged. You should only get the loaded general one time each age.