New Patch Incoming!

[Eagle Pursuit]

Don't assume the Wonders cost the same amount of production. They did a cost overhaul on them as well. They may have weaker bonuses, but they may also be easier to build.

 

[Makavcio]

Uh, well, this is nice, I guess, but still the game doesn't reach 20% of its potential. All factions are extremely similar, there is little difference between ideologies, aliens are useless and uninteresting, and combat is plainly boring. Not to mention that AI is even more pathetic than in Civ5.

Civ:BE is already a lost cause for me. I'm not even going to check out Starships. Well, maybe I will when the game shows up on a sale for 5$. Gotta wait for Civ6 of for a complete game overhaul that could actually influence the game basing on players choices.

Announced changes don't even touch the thing that is wrong with the game.

 

[TLHeart]

Announce that changes are coming, but dont spell out what those changes actually are...

Trade routes will still be a pain, maybe even a bigger pain...

Still no fix to the biggest problem of the game, the middle.

Exploration and setting up of your empire, okay to good.

But there is NO middle game of grow your empire, to be able to advance to the winning victory conditions

As soon as you have your empire set up, around turn 100, it is grab your affinity points, build your wonder and win. There is no reason to build a wonder, as your cities will out produce any wonder, and you will have won soon after reaching that magic 13.

 

[Acken]

The my2K stuff seems to be for those interested in Starships. Since I'm not it doesn't really affect me. But I really wonder if this is truly necessary.

 

[omniclast]

Came to see if any of the big needed changes would be made, leaving rather disappointed. I like the trade routes change but the yields still don't make sense. No changes to health availability, viability of virtue trees, specialists, broken seeding options, institute slingshot, weak affinity units... And those are just the easy things to fix, not the centrally broken game mechanics like affinity rushing, bad AI/lack of diplomacy and lacklustre midgame.

I like that they're listening to the community on some things like TRs, but I really have to wonder what the hell they're doing with their work hours when it takes them a whole quarter to come up with these minor changes while people like Ryika and the fellow who makes the UI tweaks mod came up with essential change mods and bug fixes in a few weeks of their spare time, without access to the DLL.

But I guess I can be happy to have affinity quests after turn 100 in mp again...

EDIT: didn't see this initially but AIs properly DoWing on completion of your wonder could have a MASSIVE impact on gameplay if implemented correctly. Would make wonder rushing a lot more difficult, and potentially create a mid/endgame where you have to actually research a bunch of stuff to protect your wonder. But I don't want to get my hopes up...

 

[Doviello]

I agree the changes could be bigger than what was announced. But there is still some changes under "misc". Many things wrong with the game (UI, bugs, challenging aliens, interesting sponsors, even AI) can be fixed right now with mods, so i guess i'll play a couple vanilla games once the patch arrives and then mod whatever is still bad. But what we really need is an xpac right now, with new systems and stuff to do.

Pretty disapointing update. I'll probably have to use 16 mods instead of 20.

 

[Bandobras Took]

But what we really need is an xpac right now, with new systems and stuff to do.

I'm going to disagree, they need to patch the game enough to understand it before embarking on an expansion, much as they transformed Civ 5 Vanilla before releasing G&K.

 

[Leathaface]

This patch looks promising.

 

[Breezin]

I really believe that diplomacy needs to be overhauled.

As with Civ V, the Devs are spending most of their time fixing the glitches in the game rather than refining it.

Firaxis continues to support their products which I am happy about but I'd really wish they'd focus some effort on the weak diplomacy of BE and Civ V (although I know that it's gotten its last update already).

 

[Ryika]

By the way: I STRONGLY hope the "If a mod edits promotions/builds, then the unit actions won't work properly"-bug is one of thoses "minor bugs" that get fixed, because if not, then I'll be really angry!

 

[Gorbles]

The alternative of "we're going to have our own special clubhouse for all our friends and no one else because reasons" instead of working within the current framework to improve an already good system is not an improvement or particularly desirable by any stretch of the imagination. If steam "isn't always convenient to work with" I'd like to know how exactly you think adding another layer of inconvenience is likely to make everything more convenient as a whole? By all means I'm not getting an origin/uplay vibe out of this, and don't expect them to do anything silly like that (I'm boycotting 2k if this is the start of their own digital distribution platform though), but this does sound vaguely "games for windows"y to me, and it's going to take a lot to convince me that sort of thing adds anything to the experience at all, or can't just be accomplished within steam without the extra hassle.

Convenience to work with was from a developer perspective, as well as a company perspective with regards to having a closed-system that safeguards authentication and the like.

Convenience for the end user is incredibly subjective. Some people boycott Origin, some people boycott Steam, some people boycott Impulse. Games for Windows was actually the ingame extension for the Games for Windows Marketplace storefront. It was clunky and didn't work very well, but unlike Steam which gradually improved over time, GfWL didn't, and thus gamers came to hate it (for a variety of reasons, some more understandable than others).

Don't reject something just because it's "inconvenient". Every single new site you register for requires a new set of login details, yet nobody complains about that. Because you're used to it? Hah, come on.

Don't rely on Steam as the be-all-and-end-all. Valve are already abusing that monopoly.

 

[leif erikson]

Moderator Action: This thread is about the upcoming patch, not about distribution, STEAM or 2K's future plans. Do we really need another STEAM argument? Back to topic please.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Smity2k1]

Looking forward to the new patch! the bugs mentioned have pretty much covered everything I've run into except for two:
1) affinity quests (currently fixed with mod)
2) air units attacking embarked units. I constantly get animation glitches where the air unit circles and attacks for 15-20 seconds and then does significantly less damage than was shown in the prediction

Glad the wonders are getting an overhaul. Next up: make intrigue useful and find a better midgame than rushing affinity techs. Also, I think that culture costs mid to late game should be lowered.

Finally, strategic resources, affinity specific units, and orbital units all seem like a waste of time.

 

[edingess]

I hope they fix the AI's air unit usage and the combat animation bug. Those are the worst for me but they weren't mentioned

 

[Haggbart]

For me the three most critical things to fix are

- Affinity and contact victories too fast compared to military, mid-game always affinity rush now, no need to invest in late game techs.
- Apollo level still too easy
- African Union OP, should have been nerfed.

 

[PhilBowles]

Did I miss this in a livestream? I figured they'd eventually do an expansion or two even if not right away.

Lots of people have expected one based on no very clear evidence - this isn't one of the main games in the series and Civ IV: Colonization never received an expansion. Firaxis weren't even originally planning expansions for their flagship title Civ V, and said from the start that BE would only get one if it did well. Only they know the sales figures, but I'm not aware of any indication that it has done especially well - it's had nothing like the post-release exposure or presence in sales/weekend deals of Steam's popular titles, and Firaxis' lethargy with patch support isn't encouraging either.

Now, when we get hints from the Steam database that there's something new coming, the announcement reveals it to be a seemingly minor patch whose key feature seems to be pushing compatibility with a game that won't even be released for several months.

People can draw their own conclusions, but to me the message seems a clear "we're done with BE, but for those who went out and bought it we're retrofitting our next game to be compatible with it as a consolation prize". That way, Starships - a game originally designed independently of BE - will act as a pseudo-expansion to BE without significant extra effort from Firaxis.

 

[PhilBowles]

Depends on your definition of improvement. Making wonders something you might actually want to build is a vast improvement, in my mind.

They're just buildings. Ideally, any building available will be worth building; Wonders don't add any new dynamic to the game.

"Rather minor," forsooth. What, pray tell, would a rather major set of changes be, just so we can establish a baseline for comparison?

Changes that affect the fundamental way the game is played, not just tweaking an unengaging system to rebalance several different unengaging strategies.

The way affinity scales with technology is poorly-implemented and should be looked at, and affinity differences themselves should have more of an impact on strategy than they do rather than providing passive bonuses and extra units, without promoting any differences in playstyle to take advantage of them.

The fact that every quest spawns in every game at the same game stage leads to low replayability and would be better-implemented as a series of random events.

The lack of any incentive to interact with other civs except via warfare is an unwelcome throwback to older Civ games and leads to very static Sim City play without real competition with the other powers.

 

[Ryika]

Only they know the sales figures, but I'm not aware of any indication that it has done especially well.

The game had almost 90k players peak at the day it was released, it can't have sold THAT badly. Interest died down fast, but if anything I guess that's an indicator that people are interested in the game but don't quite like it the way it is now - so... perfect situation for DLC, if you ask me.

@"fundamental changes": I agree that this would be cool, but I don't think this is going to happen as a patch.

 

[Manannan]

The game had almost 90k players peak at the day it was released, it can't have sold THAT badly. Interest died down fast, but if anything I guess that's an indicator that people are interested in the game but don't quite like it the way it is now - so... perfect situation for DLC, if you ask me.

@"fundamental changes": I agree that this would be cool, but I don't think this is going to happen as a patch.

DLC to expand the game is kind of a tricky thing to do when the game has been so negatively received in the first place though. It's one thing to shell out $30 or whatever for an expansion that revamps the game in a big way, it's entirely another to shell out $5-10 for basic content that should have come with the base game to make it less underwhelming in the first place. Maybe somewhere down the line AFTER they've done some significant legwork with patches to fix the game, but I know I for one would not be impressed to have them try to sell me an extra sponsor or some extra wonders or some extra maps via DLC while the game is still broken.

 

[Ryika]

Sure, with DLC I did of course mean big dlc (Expansions) like G+K + BNW for Civ 5. AddOns that bring life to what many think are rather dull systems right now and make more players interested at this game. And of course, many fundamental problems should be fixed via patches first - pushing out as dlc what should be patches would of course not be a good idea.