New Patch - same old story

[MasterMishi]

Liberty sword rush ics is still just as strong. The only change I made post patch is to go monument(cheaper post patch) after or before scout in cap to get the second liberty policy (50% settlers and free settler) asap. This is the new beeline policy. Still getting swords early turn 30s and longs turn 65ish with detour to lux techs before steel and no GL sling.
Settling on the riverside hills to get the 2food 2 hammers 1 gold base is now quite a good idea methinks.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

The patch was to address ICS or more accurately the "tall vs wide" empire balance, not MP sword rushing. So I don't know what you were expecting. They have not even made a MP patch to fix the basics, or add PBEM, pitboss or Hotseat, and you are expecting them to balance the game for MP? I'm afraid that is never going to happen, it never has happened in any Civ game.

If they get SP balanced right that is all we can expect, MP balance has always been done in mods by us MPers for MPers. I do not expect that to change. The reason why is that it is basically impossible to do both, yes in general you can make the game over all good for both, but the AI does not sword rush so the AI code would not be able to handle any "sword rush fix" us MPers might think is necessary. That is always going to be the issue.

If we want a taylor made game balanced for MP that is going to have to be our job to make it.

CS

 

[Tabarnak]

Yeah CS got it right here. This is why IW is so much needed in MP games. In single player mode, you can more easily survive without iron. An MP mod adding balance in that sense can always be welcome.

 

[MasterMishi]

It doesnt bother me , just trying to start a discussion on the optimum mp strat rather than a love / hate the patch discussion - too many of them.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

It doesnt bother me , just trying to start a discussion on the optimum mp strat rather than a love / hate the patch discussion - too many of them.

And that is fine, but the title you chose for this thread is misleading then, as it lead me to believe that you thought the patch failed to do something that it was designed to do....

Yes perhaps we need a better resourceless unit in the early game that will at least allow players to defend themselves ok. We did this with Civ3 future era games by adding the TOW missile unit. So maybe we need a slightly better spear or archer unit.....

CS

 

[bossconian]

I agree with CS - if we ever wanted to play civ in multiplayer we should write the game ourselves.

 

[MasterMishi]

if you were mislead then i agree with you - it was misleading

how has the patch changed your multiplayer strategy? do you now build a monument?

on your point regarding expectations and rewriting multiplayer etc... i agree with you

 

[Kyp Durron]

The Answer I believe would be a stronger unit post Pikeman that they can upgrade into. Say str 16. And around the same distance as Steel is from Iron Working.

We could go straight civil service, to get Pikeman and have a unit that can hold its own against swords, but once those swords start upgrading to Longswords, its over.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Yes maybe we need to mod in a Maceman unit( or perhaps call it a Medieval Infantry), comes the same time as Pikes but doesn't require iron, longbows were good for this in Civ4 but ranged units in Civ5 are no good except as support for melee units. A mace melee unit might be what we need.

CS

 

[Tabarnak]

Mace melee unit with 14-15 but with almost same cost as longswordmen upgradable at rifles. 25% penalty against horses. Sounds good for me. Iron should still gives an advantage somewhere. It's a ressource after all. Does a warrior can be upgraded to a macemen or from another unit? I don't think it's a good idea. Pikemen maybe. But should need a tech farther in the tech tree than civil service. Like one or two tech later. Longswordmen should give an advantage to a player who hard beeline them. With new patch, it's very hard to find 100 gold for upgrades.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Yes I agree, have them slightly weaker than Long-swords, but at the same cost, but no iron required. I think they should be upgraded from Spears, but at a higher cost than it takes to upgrade swords to long-swords, something along the same cost as warriors to swords. Long-swords will still be stronger to give having them worthwhile if you have iron, but gives the player screwed out of iron an option other than dying as soon as LS's appear :-/ And yes upgradable to rifles would make sense.

Personally I would put maces at Steel just like Long-swords to give all players the same options for a military solution, the guy with iron gets a unit that is strength 18, and the guy without iron gets a str 15 unit to defend or attack with.

CS

 

[Tabarnak]

Can't upgrade from spears, they already upgrade to pikemen. That's why i said from pikes in my earlier post. One choice for upgrade for each units so far. That said, i think introducing another ancient unit which can be uniquely upgraded to macemen can be doable. Like axemen...

Edit : maybe introducing copper for axemen as another ressource, but less scarce. with just less power than a regular swordman(9 maybe) and maybe with a combat penalty against horses to not overflow them automatically.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

There is really no such thing as "can't" in a mod, you can do anything that the lua/xml/C++ will let you do. Civ4 had lots of instances of units upgrading to more than one unit choice, it was just dependent on how much you had to spend.

Axemen is another option for something weaker than swords but better than warriors/spears. I'm not sure if trying to add copper as a resource would to complex, we would have to deal with the map generation issues then as well. Will have to think on the balance in Civ5 if we were to add a resourceless Axemen as a weak melee unit, or create a new resource that is more common.......

CS

 

[Bernout1]

If they get SP balanced right that is all we can expect, MP balance has always been done in mods by us MPers for MPers. I do not expect that to change. The reason why is that it is basically impossible to do both, yes in general you can make the game over all good for both, but the AI does not sword rush so the AI code would not be able to handle any "sword rush fix" us MPers might think is necessary. That is always going to be the issue.

If you think about it, balancing the game for MP would only help the SP balance. The reason for this is that players will use the best strategies and the AI will not.

Bernout

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Perhaps give Swords and Longswords -25% v. Horse units

Would make Horses+(Spear+Pikes) stronger and good for defense.

 

[pi-r8]

Do you think that rushing directly for rifles is a viable strategy for MP now? Especially now that you can use babylon for MP games?

I guess it would depend on the map a lot.

 

[Tabarnak]

Do you think that rushing directly for rifles is a viable strategy for MP now? Especially now that you can use babylon for MP games?

I guess it would depend on the map a lot.

Yes it's viable, but not necessary like from last patch before. With buildings enhanced like markets and 2slots universities, chivalry is suddenly closer and a engineer rush for Himeji is always faisible. More balanced overall me think.