New Patch Incoming!

[Gort]

Pretty sure these bonuses are added to what is already there, if not, then most of these wonders would be quite useless.

So, you think the Human Hive is going to reduce Intrigue levels AND make your city immune to covert ops, then?

I also wouldn't care about getting four additional food from the Ectogenesis Pod if it's already giving me +1 per farm, and why would you think Ectogenesis Pod needed a buff, anyway?

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I'm a bit concerned about trade routes, unfortunately. Micromanaging a ton of the damn things just isn't much fun, and if they're going for something like "1 trade route plus one per four population" then we're going to end up with about four per city by the late game, which sounds unwieldy. Auto-renewing trade routes is fine, but I know I'm always going to want to review my options with trade routes rather than risk continuing a trade route that gives me no benefit.

Lowering the intrigue cost on affinity covert ops should have been an obvious fix to anyone from day 1. Stealing a city is far more valuable than just damaging it a bit.

 

[JokerJace]

So, you think the Human Hive is going to reduce Intrigue levels AND make your city immune to covert ops, then?

I think that's the proof the patch notes describe the complete new effects. Truly disappointing.

 

[LORD ORION]

I apologize for my ignorance, but AU?

African Union... sorry

 

[LORD ORION]

Hey new challenge... can you win with 1 city as Polystralia?

Build that sucker up as fast as possible to see how many international trade routes you can get.

 

[shaglio]

And it doesn't seem they change anything about the way the trade route yields work now, so meh.

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.

 

[Gorbles]

African Union. Lotta complaints on how it's the new "no brainer" faction. I wouldn't say so myself, but it's definitely strong. I think Brasilia are a bit underrated by comparison.

 

[Dux1]

So, you think the Human Hive is going to reduce Intrigue levels AND make your city immune to covert ops, then?

And Crawler would reduce wonder and building production costs by 25% in addition to reducing wonder costs by 25%...

Yeah, I'm pretty sure these are all-new effects.

African Union... sorry

Oh yes, of course.

 

[Ryika]

So, you think the Human Hive is going to reduce Intrigue levels AND make your city immune to covert ops, then?

No, I think yields stay and Effects are changed/added. Not sure of course. But if the new effects are all the wonders have then, well, then most of them are still horribly bad.

 

[Barathor]

Sweet, looks like a pretty decent patch. Perhaps it'll be released some time next week, since Firaxis usually likes to stay sealed shut and quiet until they're prepared to open the floodgates upon us.

I also rushed over and created a my2K account, haha.

1. The Orbital duration from Quantum Computer. Apparently they still haven't realized that +x orbital duration is a penalty and not a bonus for some satellites.

That's what I thought when reading this as well. Perhaps it'll be addressed under the "misc." bug fixes mentioned and the bonus will be applied appropriately to the ones that benefit from it.

I am disappointed there is no mention of restoring the post turn 100 quests that were removed in the last patch. Hopefully this was fixed but just forgot to make the patch notes.

Me too, and hopefully it didn't make it on the list or is covered under "misc.". But that seems like too big of a fix to not list it.

Trade Routes: Yes, good idea, though I really wonder how many trade routes that will be. If we suddenly have 6 trade routes per city, then that will become REALLY annoying during war. And it doesn't seem they change anything about the way the trade route yields work now, so meh.

That's what I thought as well when reading it since there's no mention of a cap. I really hope it's not excessive.

 

[Gort]

Veterancy Promotions: All combat boost promotions add +10% strength

Don't they already do this?

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.

Yeah, I'm still confused about this. It doesn't make much sense to me that Internal Trade Routes work by making the small city feed the big one, but External Trade Routes work by making the big city feed the small one.

It's possible that they'll completely rework the trade yields since they're completely reworking the number of trade routes, but they haven't said so.

 

[Barathor]

Veterancy Promotions: All combat boost promotions add +10% strength

Don't they already do this?

No, level 4 added +20% strength. They added a 5th and 6th level so now they all just reward +10%.

For healing, it went like this:
1: 50
2: 50
3: 75
4: 100

Now it's:
1: 50
2: 50
3: 50
4: 75
5: 75
6: 75

 

[Gort]

Ah, guess I wasn't paying attention.

 

[LORD ORION]

"Additional gameplay balance changes were made" blah blah blah "in response to systems reported as too powerful"

"Virtues: Replaced Applied Aesthetics virtue with Applied Metasociology virtue - City Intrigue decreases faster when an Agent is present"

This made me shoot coffee out of my nose... I would have love to heard how this decision came about...

"We've got to stop African Union Players from rushing to Applied Aesthetics with their free Earth Relics in every city" *fist shake*

Sorry... I just wonder how these guys are playing sometimes... *snort laugh*

 

[Ryika]

"Additional gameplay balance changes were made" blah blah blah "in response to systems reported as too powerful"

"Virtues: Replaced Applied Aesthetics virtue with Applied Metasociology virtue - City Intrigue decreases faster when an Agent is present"

This made me shoot coffee out of my nose... I would have love to heard how this decision came about...

"We've got to stop African Union Players from rushing to Applied Aesthetics with their free Earth Relics in every city" *fist shake*

Sorry... I just wonder how these guys are playing sometimes... *snort laugh*

I actually didn't even see this one. 8)

And I really wonder how that happens.

"Damn, in our internal testings Josh always manages to win before turn 300 with this strategy that allows him to use up to 4 extra Academiess. We really have to balance this."?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Wonder changes sound interesting, although I am not sure if it is enough to make the leaf-tech wonders viable.

Trade Route changes are (hopefully) going towards the right direction. At the very least the auto-renew option will reduce the unnecessary micromanagement.

Overall a solid patch. Now all they need is to tackle affinity-rushing in the next patch and they will have eliminated the biggest problems of the game.

 

[Gort]

Just 'cause I had no idea what it did:

Applied Aesthetics: Earn extra energy equal to 30% of the culture you generate.

How incredibly underwhelming a virtue that was. I can see why they'd want to replace it with something virtually useless.

 

[Japper007]

Not a fan of yet another account on top of Steam (which is bad enough on it's own), though a free map does sweeten the deal and a crossover between BE and Starships sounds really cool!

Like to see the wonders getting buffed, this was one of the main issues I still had with the game.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The buff to wonders, the pop based trade routes and finally an auto-renew option are the 3 things that make me happy with this patch.

 

[s0nny80y]

I have yet to finish reading the first post since catching up to the bit about the my2k account...I made an 'Evolve' account for my xboxone and it sucks that i have to memorize all that haphazardly forgotten usernames and codes although i guess ill just go through the motion of passowrd recovery etcetera...inconvenient to say the least especially since I've already got a Steam account =\

 

[PhilBowles]

I'd need to be more interested in the game to care much about specific fixes to buildings or virtues. With that in mind, this seems to be a rather limited patch in which the only substantial change that will improve general gameplay is linking trade routes to population.

Looks as though they're just piggybacking a rather minor set of changes onto their "definitely no expansion coming - we're doing this instead" coding to 'integrate' BE with Starships.