New Patch - First Impressions?

Then why has it never given me this problem before now? Been playing it on & off for about 6 months without any issues :-(.

Aussie.

 

To all the people complaining about silly AI: This wasn't the AI patch, nor the multiplayer patch, unfortunately. You'll have to wait a few more months for that.

 

The AI has gotten a lot better at assessing your strength. If you've just gotten a scout to defend your nation, you are probably a lot weaker than your enemy. This was added a patch earlier, so you should've encountered this before.

Perhaps they did increase the difficulty a nodge, so you're actually playing on a higher difficulty. Also, winning a space victory without building an army doesn't make sense. If there is any AI out there trying to win the game through domination, you'll have to be able to keep them at bay. And defending your lands isn't the same as winning a domination victory.

 

Still the problem with AI not building cities.....and ofc the usual issues that i dont even bother to mention for the millionth time.

 

This, Before the patch my Earth map was working fine, now when i go to select a Civ its all changed like instead of Civs being in Alphabetical order its the leaders, in my scenario its Arabia first because A B C ect, so i go to select Denmark and it picks Arabia as if i havnt even choose a civ, so i go into WB to change the order of civs into alphabetical order of their Leader Names, so this time Greece because of Alexander, i choose denmark, it picks greece, What the hell is going on ?

 

I like what they did to the social policies in this new patch, particularly what they did to Piety.

 

Well assuming you sold them open borders and saw that you had nothing in your capital and a warrior and a scout 50 miles away... It's not unreasonable that an AI set to win by domination would DOW you. If the patch really did bring this... Firaxis

 

The mass unhappiness ruined my current game as well. I was conquering as China and just barely balancing my happiness at +2-3 by annexing cities, buying courthouse then other happiness establishments. It went down to -10 right away, and if I annexed or burned every city, bought a courthouse and then Colosseum where it made sense I still wouldn't have brought the happiness back.

However I started a standard post patch game as Russia on Bering Straights on Prince (a level down from what I'm used to as recommended) and I just dominated in the first hundred turns. After about turn 30 i haven't been below +8 Hap. which doesn't make sense to me because I'm expanding like crazy and have taken a few cities. Normally have a terrible struggle keeping my empire happy, but in my post patch game it has been very easy so far. I'm about 100 turns in, and been very much enjoying it. I'm also noticing the policies coming quicker which is nice, I went down liberty to start and would have had it completed but only have a couple cities connected to my capitol so Meritocracy was useless and grabbed the start of Commerce to boost gold, but 6 policies in the first hundred turns when I'm not really going for culture much is pretty awesome.

All in all, It sucks that it ruined most save games, but I think that the patch is pretty sweet. I hope in the next one they reverse the Golden age Nerf and make it +1 production everywhere again instead of +25%, like they reversed the Meritocracy .5 Hap/City back to 1 Hap/City

 

Played a 2nd game now (1/2 done with it, I think I will finish it). Rolled Egypt for my random on a continents map. I was semi-isolated on my own landmass but with a trieme and chariot archer was able to meet every civ due to some islands connecting all of our land masses.

Went liberty opener, honor opener, finished liberty and then went through all of piety. Egypt is a good civ now with proper temples with a bonus. I've got 8 cities and am sitting at +40 happiness with all of the luxuries through trade or city stateS. Will probably finish right side of honor then work on order to go for a space victory. Plan to build about 12-15 cities.

Tradition tree is a bit weak. Landed elite needs either +2 happiness for every 10 citizens or a secondary effect. Still not a bad tree for a tall empire with intent on culture victory, but liberty and honor are both very good and seem more flexible.

One thing I did notice is that a few of the AI are running HUGE deficit economies (-20 thru -50 gpt). I'm playing on King level but it seems like the ai is having a harder time maintaining their tresury. When I first scouted Siam's landmass (also has his own) he had around 20-30 troops in a big blob doing nothing for him and he was broke because of all of the units.

Maybe I need to up my difficulty as I had been playing at King for a long time now. Maybe try a Terra map next to avoid being isolated and having to worry about invasions.

 

Haven't gotten too far with the new patch, but impressions anyway!

Stone/stoneworks are awesome. A fantastic addition.

The AI has had some real improvement, it seems, even if only in unit production. Alexander attacked me with a really strong and concerted combined-arms attack force focused on Companion Cav doing hit-and-retreat backed with swords who seemed to be buddied-up with archers (mostly) behind them. It was certainly not a half-hearted attempt, and I might have really struggled to hold him off if I wasn't Rome with a 6-iron and a terrain advantage.

Also, the AI seem to be hooking up their extra luxuries at a better rate now, which is nice given that you really need to trade with them now.

Making friends and working on those friendships seems worthwhile now as well. I think the diplomacy is really starting to get there.



Honour is Back. The culture from barbs is of course not as strong as the Tradition or Liberty equivalents, but it's enough to propel you to the garrison policy in reasonable time. And the garrison policy is great with the extra culture, it really does help honour keep a bit of pace culture-wise now. The 15% melee production was enough to make a noticeable difference as well. And if the AI actually is fighting (or even just producing) better, then those combat bonuses will be a lot more handy.

Interestingly, honour now seems to be a viable choice for a much less aggressive/more defensive game (particularly the right-hand path).
- You don't need to be a warmonger to get the barbarian culture (and the vs barbs bonuses can help a builder defend their lands more easily/cheaply).
- Formation tends to favour the defender holding the line.
- Garrison is primarily a peacetime bonus, and is very useful for peaceful early expansion as well, since it's just about the fastest way to get culture pumping in a new city and lets you delay a monument for something else (and keeps new-city happiness in line with pre-patch).
- With archers much cheaper and stronger now, it's also an obvious choice to build a bunch of these to fill the garrison role (and to fight barbs for easy culture/gold/citystate love), and they're exceptional city defenders.
- Professional Army gives all that extra happiness to those who build walls etc - which is more the hybrid players/more peaceful defenders rather than the momentum warmongers using their huge armies to defend.
- And the free great general is really going to help in your first war and only your first war, however early or late it may be, so it's good even if you're delaying war rather than rushing in right from the start.

It's still a sub-optimal choice if you're planning to minimise your fighting, but it doesn't feel like a waste of a whole bunch of policies to take it and then not spend the whole game at war. I took it, had one big war and then settled down for some buildering and didn't regret taking it. Then when Alex came knocking at my door, I had some decent bonuses to help me boot him away. There's enough in there for the hybrid player, or even the builder who feels that they're in a situation where defence is a primary concern.

 

Haha, VERY first impressions after just an hour or so playing last night:

Stone House (or whatever it's called, I'm at work ATM) is a nifty little building. I like that more is done with quarries, but mines are less good now it seems. Off the top of my head, a quarry now gives what, like two food and three production? The building can give a pretty massive boost to production relatively early, and personally I just like the buildings that give bonuses to resources.

I'm no warmonger at heart, but in my first game I'm running Honor with the Aztecs, and it's FUN. In my previous Aztec games pre-patch, they always seemed better suited as a builder civ, and I'm guessing that this new version is the way they were originally intended.

The happiness "nerf" isn't much of a nerf at all so far. Granted, I don't have many cities yet--too busy fending off/slaughtering Russian troops for fun and profit. But so far buildings seem easier to build and there are several different and new ways to get the happiness.

That "Nerf" is to me just a byproduct of fixing an original complaint about the game--that it takes forever to build anything. Well, now they're faster to build, and to compensate some of the buildings need to be a bit less powerful.

 

I had this happen to me in a previous patch. Since my graphics card is somewhat old, I decided to just use the ini file to disable it.

From the top google hit:
Navigate to My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization V/
Look for the file "Usersettings.ini" and open it in a text editor like Notepad
Search for the variable "SkipIntroVideo = 0"
Change the 0 to 1

 

I don't know what people are talking about with AI not building cities. The AI had about 50%n more cities in my game and covered almost the whole map. Every old prince game had about 25-33% of the map that never got filled. Now I had Rome plus Iroqouis plus Songhai on the map but still. Old patch it never filled no matter who.

The AI was 2-3 times richer than in my old prince games and spammed an increased number of units. That extra power led to more wars. I had Hiawatha close by me and he declared on me 4 times at friendly. Now Hiawatha's new Mohawk's give him a decent classical unit, but he spams too many of them and can't upgrade them at prince. so his later army is weaker since he has mohawk's instead of pikeman.

Happiness was not really a problem. i ended with 20+ happiness, 15 or so cities and 45 size capital two mid 30's city and another at least in the mid 20's. As the Aztec's honor plus piety can give you a lot of happiness. Monarchy let my capital grow like a weed, and landed elite actually gave over 10 happiness in that set up, With the right picks you can have a decent empire. i needed to annex only about a 1/3 of my conquests to maintain happiness.

Science was really slow, though I didn't get enough RA's, which I need to get more of now that I don't plan on taking scholastisism, and it delayed my win. However, overall I would call it an improvement.

 

My first impression is that the game is a lot better and I am enjoying it. Will definitely play a few games through before moving on to something else.

 

woop, I think it's great all in all. And I think turn times have dramatically decreased as a result of it too!

 

Is it just me and my friends, or have they totally screwed multiplayer now? Can't make 6 player games to work more then 2 turns maximum. This is soooooo frustrating.

 

I have a simpler explanation: the AI behavior is largely determined by random rolls and you simply get unlucky sometimes. That's bad game design, of course, for major things like attacking players out of the gate. But that's how this version of Civ is meant to be played.

Traditionally if you played multiplayer you had to be on your toes for an early military strike, while builders could do the single player variant and get a peaceful opening. (If the computer players can take advantage of the same breathing space, by the way, there is no balance problem with such a design; it's a style choice.)

The kid who was lead designer, however, clearly wanted an aggressive wargame out of the gate, and that's what Civ 5 is. Even games like Starcraft don't generally have the AI rush you in the opening minutes of the game - because a lot of people don't enjoy playing that way.

 

First game since last patch (the AI/bug fixing patch), so it was a shock just how hostile some of the AIs were. I'm embroiled in a war with two rivals, and I'm not even to the Classical era yet. My next game will be better suited to deal with this, and I'm interested to see how well the bribing/trade bonuses to diplo go.

I like Social Policies a lot better. They feel like distinctive, unique things. It's possible that when I figure out optimal strategies cherry-picking from each branch will be a better strategy, but my 'feel' read on them is that each policy branch is distinctive and that I'm really picking traits of my civ. I went down the Honor branch and my civ has a distinctive personality and approach to the world based on that.

I haven't really got a handle on the new tech tree. Stone changed my initial approach a bit, but really I still think Pottery is the first tech 90% of the time. The only thing that has a real chance to change that is early aggro AI, since building a few archers in the first few dozen turns might be essential.

 

This. Plus culture from killing barbs and cheap garrisons for +1 happy and +2 culture.

 

The problem with it in SP is that you now have to wade through two terrible policies (Landed Elite and Oligarchy) on the way to the finisher. I know that some people still swear by Oligarchy, and I can see how it would be much better in MP when you're facing small hordes of advanced units, but it's rare that it makes enough of a marginal difference to save a city that otherwise would be flipped on Deity. If you didn't build a competent garrison, the city's dead either way.

By contrast, every policy in Liberty is at least decent and the GE can be cashed in for the Hanging Gardens, which is arguably a lot better than the Tradition finisher for a very long time.

Tradition will still see play for Legalism for free MPMs, Burial Tombs and Wats, and at that point you might as well pick up Monarchy. I just have a hard time seeing players finishing out the tree when you could easily have Scholasticism with those policies.