New Patch Incoming!

[Acken]

@Acken: I don't worry about having my concerns ignored because I'm in the minority. If a company starts catering to my concerns at the cost of ignoring their larger revenue base, they're not going to be making whatever part of the game attracts me for much longer anyway, because they'll go bankrupt.

Who talks about ignoring the majority ? This isn't a binary issue here.

It isn't about automatic renewal being bad. It is not bad. It's like having auto-workers. It just doesn't fix the problem for some players that would actually like a good TR system to manage.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

First and foremost, I am excited to see Wonders worth building in BE. However I would like Firaxis to stop slashing and burning the trade/energy mechanic. I no longer use external trade routes after they inverted the formula because I prefer not to always get the short end of the trade stick to 'balance the game.' So I don't expect that 'population based trade routes' will be a trade buff givent heir past trajectory of punishing strong economies.

You're only getting the bad deal because your doing well. The city with less energy or science gets the most out of the deal. If that's you then you might be doing something wrong. External trade is for the weaker to catch up by feeding off the stronger economy. So pat yourself on the back and enjoy your internal routes and the AI will be connecting to you with their routes.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this yet. That seems to be one of the biggest grievances with the Trade Routes (that the yields appear to be reversed), so it was the first thing I looked for in the patch notes. But, I don't see anything about it.

I've more or less made my peace with the trade routes functioning this way. The externals I'd think are meant to be a rubber band mechanic. They're only good for you if you're the one who's behind. For internals, I get why they went this way. Pre patch every new city I built immediately became the most productive city, without any development. It had no infrastructure but I could build wonders there. Then it became stagnant when I moved trade away. Energy buying and pre building improvements is how we get a city up and running faster, rather than trade routes.
However, it makes little sense that big cities gain so much from new cities, and I miss the few times I made a special point to create a super food producing city and had every city link to it. That kind of plan and payoff is what make strategy games fun. So while I do want trade to function differently, I don't want it to just go back to the way it was.

 

[s0nny80y]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am enjoying one city challenges. As a matter of fact, I feel like OCC is the best way to feel your way through the game. Right now I'm AU on Soyuz and diplomacy is finally making sense, as well as covert ops. I look forward to an official release date for the patch AND Starships =)

 

[tedeviatings]

I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned this yet. That seems to be one of the biggest grievances with the Trade Routes (that the yields appear to be reversed), so it was the first thing I looked for in the patch notes. But, I don't see anything about it.

I can see and accept your opinion but I don't share it and I think it's also not shared by the majority of other players - which is why it's (probably) not getting reversed again.

To go into a little more detail: The main argument I've read that argues in favor of old trade routes seems to be realism. It usually goes along the lines of
"When a small city and a big city trade shouldn't the small city be the one that get's a lot and not the other way around? Common sense please, Firaxis!".

Now, what's important here is to see, that this is an argument that totally makes sense for some people. It's also totally irrelevant for other people - and that's not a question of right or wrong, it just is and therefore should be accepted.
It really seems come down to how much realism and immersion influence your enjoyment of the game compared to game balance. If you get a lot of enjoyment out of a realistic game that you can really immerse yourself in, enjoy the lore, the quotes, the setting... Then obviously something blatantly unrealistic annoys you. And it's your good right to state this as you did.
But there are a lot of people out there who care more about other aspects of the game, like game balance. They might still enjoy the setting and lore and all that but to them it's more important that the game presents an interesting problem. So obviously these people would gladly trade some realism if it makes their problem of "how do I best win the game" sufficiently more enjoyable. This is done by changing mechanics that might be realistic but also simplify winning too much because they're "overpowered". Which is what happened to the old trade routes.

So while it's your good right to prefer more realistic trade I'd guess the best you can hope for is another rework of trade routes but not a reversal.

 

[Acken]

I fail to see how the new yield system is so much better for game balance or for being interesting.

Also external trade routes.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

External trade routes are for losers. I mean that literally. They siphon off energy and science from high output cities to low output cities. If you're spamming academies then of course you can't get good return on external routes. You're not supposed to. The other colony is supposed to send routes to you to gain some science and energy, and you get some from that route too. So you are befitting from external routes. They just aren't your routes.
External routes are functioning as intended.

 

[Acken]

No what happens is that I rarely use them anymore. Good design.

 

[tedeviatings]

The two main adjustment made for game balance seem to be
(1) reducing the number of trade routes by removing the autoplant quest and
(2) changing the trade route formula

As for how these helped game balance:

(1) This change reduces the number of TRs and therefore their overall impact. It also seems to be the change noone argues about - I assume it's because people think it's a good thing.

(2) Alright, formula. Let's take a look at what actually changed. Most importantly, what changed for the most meaningful internal trade routes which would be "small city trades with big city". It seems to me the overall yield of a trade route (that is total food or hammers gained in either direction) stayed roughly the same. The difference is which city gets how much of the total food or hammers.

Before the patch there would be roughly a 2:1 split in favor of the small city. Which means if the trade route was "worth" 9 food then the small city would get 6 and the big city 3.
After the patch the split is more like 1:0 in favor of the big city. So the 9 food trade route now gives 9 food to the big city and 0 food to the small one.

I'd argue this is a a lot better than before for game balance. It's plain too powerful to get a city from "just founded" to "mid sized" in a couple of turns. It is also good to give additional food and hammers to a city that already has a lot of both - but that's decidedly less useful. There are fringe behaviors that are bad with both formulas and I'm not advocating the new formula is the end-all-be-all formula or even good. But I'm arguing the impact of trade routes on the game is notably less because of this so it's an improvement.
This of course assumes that we agree on the premise that trade routes had too big of an impact before the patch therefore lowering the gain from trade routes is good up to a point. It is my opinion that trade routes are not "too weak" right now and hope we can agree on that.

I don't have a strong opinion on whether or not trade routes are inherently interesting - or if the patch made them even more or less so. Since having different options where none is obviously superior is mostly a good thing I'd probably agree with you if anything. Although it should be mentioned that having less TRs made them less annoying so I liked that.

As for external trade routes... They have niche uses at best right now so they could probably use a buff to make them more competitive with respect to internal and stations TRs.

 

[Acken]

I mostly agree with what you said that it slowed down the craziness it was before. But I don't like the new system either. You still spam them, they still give a big yield making city placement a second thought etc. And now to develop a city the idea is just to make another city to have some sort of domino effect regardless of terrain. I just dislike both system, that's why I never felt patch 1 fixed it or something.

 

[Ryika]

I'd argue this is a a lot better than before for game balance. It's plain too powerful to get a city from "just founded" to "mid sized" in a couple of turns. It is also good to give additional food and hammers to a city that already has a lot of both - but that's decidedly less useful. There are fringe behaviors that are bad with both formulas and I'm not advocating the new formula is the end-all-be-all formula or even good. But I'm arguing the impact of trade routes on the game is notably less because of this so it's an improvement.

It's certainly better in terms of game balance, but at the same time its extremely limiting and there's pretty much only one way to use trade routes. And if that's the case... then why not just get rid of trade routes and just make these bonuses passive?

If the only gameplay element is: "Make your big cities even bigger", then where's the fun in that? There's no strategy involved in that system, it's just something that rewards good micromanagement. And penalizes those who don't want to do that much micromanagement.

I'd argue that a good system allows for different strategies.
- Starting your new cities off by feeding them with trade routes (not as quickly as before the last patch - that was a balance issue, not a design issue)
- Allowing your big cities to build wonders (or armies) by feeding them with trade routes
- Allowing External Trade Routes to be rewarding even when you're ahead in science (for example by giving the player who's behind the biggest amount of science and giving the other player the biggest amount of energy - does even make sense: You "sell off" your knowledge to that faction)

This "There's only one right way to do it"-system is just boring.

 

[LORD ORION]

This "There's only one right way to do it"-system is just boring.

Yeah, that's my biggest complaint.
Rarely do you get trade routes in synch to change them up at the same time.

As I see it, I have 2 choices.

I do the following to bring cities to even population
1) Look for the biggest yield
2) Of those... look for the biggest yield with the most food
3) Of those... look for the most even split between cities (it is rarely 50/50, but picking one sided high yield routes is not optimal for growth)

In that order....
This always builds my cities up closely to equilibrium because small cities need less food.

If I want to push big cities
1) Look for the route with the most production for the big city, every other consideration be damned.

Eventually the routes get into synch to do these on the empire scale if you repeat the same methods for every expired trade route, but if I could just pick all routes at the same time and manage them, it would allow for much wider options.

I seriously doubt I will ever use the auto-resume feature... because that is just lazy and bad... some routes change drastically over 25 turns.

 

[Manannan]

I'm curious, did the devs ever make any kind of statement about trade routes and whether they were working as intended, or no? I'd be a lot more willing to cut them some slack over bad design if they would at least let people know "hey, yields aren't bugged, it's working as intended, and here's why we did it this way instead of some other way" (assuming "here's why" != "the voices in my head dictated it"). The silence is far more frustrating than anything else imo.

 

[Gorbles]

As far as I know, they didn't.

That said, "bad design" is wonderfully subjective.

 

[TLHeart]

The biggest problem with trade routes, is that they have a set time limit, that the player does not control. Then when that time limit is up, the trade route interrupts the players thoughts saying it needs to be renewed or reassigned...

Now imagine if the city workers did the same thing.

Trade routes, since the developers have stated they are meant to be a large part of the economy, needs to be handled the same way your city workers are. Either assigned by a governor, or the user can focus the governor, or the user can micro manage the trade routes, just like one can the city workers. No time limits.

Even with that change, there would still be the large problem of no middle game. With the winning victories unlocked at 13 affinity, there is no middle game. just create your empire, then rush to the end. There is no tension between the affinity choices, no tension with the other civs. Makes for a boring, lack of replay game.

 

[JokerJace]

The biggest problem with trade routes, is that they have a set time limit, that the player does not control. Then when that time limit is up, the trade route interrupts the players thoughts saying it needs to be renewed or reassigned...

Now imagine if the city workers did the same thing.

Trade routes, since the developers have stated they are meant to be a large part of the economy, needs to be handled the same way your city workers are. Either assigned by a governor, or the user can focus the governor, or the user can micro manage the trade routes, just like one can the city workers. No time limits.

Even with that change, there would still be the large problem of no middle game. With the winning victories unlocked at 13 affinity, there is no middle game. just create your empire, then rush to the end. There is no tension between the affinity choices, no tension with the other civs. Makes for a boring, lack of replay game.

Yap, that would be perfect. Either that or simply take them over as similar as possible to CiV. But I guess they will keep distorting them to some abstract monstrosity rather than admitting the fundamental principle of their implementation is flawed beyond a 'small' fix.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I'd argue that a good system allows for different strategies.
- Starting your new cities off by feeding them with trade routes (not as quickly as before the last patch - that was a balance issue, not a design issue)
- Allowing External Trade Routes to be rewarding even when you're ahead in science (for example by giving the player who's behind the biggest amount of science and giving the other player the biggest amount of energy - does even make sense: You "sell off" your knowledge to that faction)

I've been saying that each yield should go in one direction. Energy comes in, science goes out, or vise versa. I'd even say try the same with food-production routes.

To go into a little more detail: The main argument I've read that argues in favor of old trade routes seems to be realism...

Now, what's important here is to see, that this is an argument that totally makes sense for some people. It's also totally irrelevant for other people - and that's not a question of right or wrong, it just is and therefore should be accepted.
It really seems come down to how much realism and immersion influence your enjoyment of the game compared to game balance.

There's a subtle difference between what is realistic and what is logical.
I'd use the example of Megatron from Transformers. He's a huge robot that can turn into a human scale gun. Unrealistic. But I've heard the explanation that Transformers fold components into a fourth dimension of subspace, so their size only changes in our three dimensional perspective. Logical although not realistic.
I'm fine with things being unrealistic for gameplay reasons, but having new cities get nothing from trade while big cities get more than they could get from a developed city is illogical.
In realism vs gameplay, I'd like them to try and meet in the middle at logic.

 

[PhilBowles]

Source, please.

I recall seeing it in one of the Q&A reviews with a games site, but couldn't find it on a quick search. Not that it's terribly relevant where they said it since it's a pretty general policy with most games that they won't be supported if they do badly.

 

[PhilBowles]

I can see and accept your opinion but I don't share it and I think it's also not shared by the majority of other players - which is why it's (probably) not getting reversed again.

To go into a little more detail: The main argument I've read that argues in favor of old trade routes seems to be realism. It usually goes along the lines of
"When a small city and a big city trade shouldn't the small city be the one that get's a lot and not the other way around? Common sense please, Firaxis!".

Now, what's important here is to see, that this is an argument that totally makes sense for some people. It's also totally irrelevant for other people - and that's not a question of right or wrong, it just is and therefore should be accepted.
It really seems come down to how much realism and immersion influence your enjoyment of the game compared to game balance. If you get a lot of enjoyment out of a realistic game that you can really immerse yourself in, enjoy the lore, the quotes, the setting... Then obviously something blatantly unrealistic annoys you. And it's your good right to state this as you did.
But there are a lot of people out there who care more about other aspects of the game, like game balance. They might still enjoy the setting and lore and all that but to them it's more important that the game presents an interesting problem. So obviously these people would gladly trade some realism if it makes their problem of "how do I best win the game" sufficiently more enjoyable. This is done by changing mechanics that might be realistic but also simplify winning too much because they're "overpowered". Which is what happened to the old trade routes.

So while it's your good right to prefer more realistic trade I'd guess the best you can hope for is another rework of trade routes but not a reversal.

One would question whether it's even realistic to expect the smaller city to gain more. When the Americas were colonised, the vast bulk of trade was from the colonies back to Europe, not vice versa. You can also conceptualise it in economic terms: larger cities have both higher demand and greater resources to purchase goods. In game terms you may be giving things away to another part of your realm 'for free', and reaping the benefits of all of it as long as trade is internal, but that isn't the scale at which trade works in reality. If the smaller settlement doesn't have funds to purchase goods in quantity, no one will be selling to it; they certainly won't be supplying it on the altruistic grounds that the smaller settlement needs to grow. But the small, poor settlement will be eager to sell what it produces to wealthy buyers in the larger towns.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Since the patch will add the my2K connectivity with Starships, I am guessing that the patch will come out before Starships is released. The release date for Starships has been announced as March 12 (here). So, I am thinking that the patch will come before March 12. We won't have to wait long.