October 2020 Update - Patch Notes Discussion

"Spy missions can no longer be performed in cities of a player you have an Alliance with."

It does not surprise me in de slightless. FXs is focusing a ton of the changes in balances for multiplayer. I see this update as something pretty much like the DF penalty for owning capitals, is a hard punishment that restricts all players in exchange for hopefully reduce the abusive behavior of some multiplayer ones.

As with the DF penalty, i disgree with this change. But lets be honest, at least there is more real world justification behind this one, and is also less restrictive to the average player.

 

Yeah this absolutely would have been the better fix imo. Tying movement bonus to the generals keeps the historical theme of Bolivar and his generals rapid, at times nearly inhuman movement speed on campaign, while nerfing the OP blanket movement bonus.

*Edit - I'm clearly new and don't know how to consistently quote properly - this was responding to @Piranga 's point about GC movement

 

Unwarranted Gran Columbia nerf. The change to ally spying is ridiculous as well.

 

They could add a new win condition: humanity united - everybody wins and is happy ever after

 

I didn't actually consider this fact, it would appear now that you should never be allying civs in the late game that are very close to a culture/science victory (emphasis on the latter). I'd much rather knock down a few spaceports of a neighbor I'm not allied with than be getting bonuses/protection from an ally whom I can't touch.

 

I agree the spying changes is a little odd/unexpected. Most of the complaints I've seen would warrant a change more like "Don't like my allies declare war on City States I'm the suzerain of", nothing spying related. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't make that change in conjuction if they were doing this - now the only thing left to do with your spies if you've got a lot of alliances is try and steal your ally's city states with them!

I'd agree I would have a preferred a different approach, where you could spy on your allies but it could potentially end your alliance if caught. I'd also prefer an approach where if your ally declares war on one of your CS's or another one of your allies, you are forced to either negotiate a peace accord between them, or break off one of the alliance/suzerainships.

 

Sadly no buffs for Maya.

The Llanero and CG nerfs are adequate, but if I recall correctly, people complaining about Gran Colombia wasn't complain about Llaneros nor CG's bonus movements.

They were argue against the plain, universal +1 movement and the General bonuses stacking.

Yeah, that is probably the most common complain about Alliances. No idea why the devs didn't revisit this aspect together with the spying change.

 

Yes, but a the same time I think they were trying to dial down the overall strength without changing the core of what they were trying to do with the civ.

 

Time to give them a try - I guess the nerf bat has hit them (more than?) enough

Hmm...is that a nerf or a buff ? I know, this questions outs me that I haven't played them enough...

The biggest surprise change in any of the patches so far. I'm undecided currently. I agree that is it not particularly realistic and takes away a way (pun intended) to deal with competitors, but OTOH it is a nerf to the startegy of just always allying blindly to reap DF and trade route yields. I guess i will have to play a bit to make my judgement.

I really appreciate the work on the game speeds aside from Standard - I see myself playing more in Epic/Marathon now. So far it was always apainful decision between a too fast pace and insufficient scaling, so theis is very welcome I just hope they packed a scaling fix to AI storage logic in as well...AIs only valuing 40 Horses/Iron/Niter on Marathon is just putting them unessesarily behind.

AI fixes are always welcome, but that one... I had already given up hope for this!

 

I agree. This generally means they do consider +1 movement as the dominant feature of Gran Colombia, and I won't mind that much about an intended unique design choice. Still sad about no love for Mayans though.

 

The fact they nerfed Gran Colombia in a weird way (how to nerf, not nerfing) doesn't mean they should nerf it. But I agree with "They shouldn't listen to the reflexive screaming of (insert anything)" thing.
If they will be responsive to every "give me this" from fans, the game will not improve because players are not game designers. In the end, everyone will not be happy, and the game will not be better, but more chaotic. Listening to fans doesn't mean the devs are obligated to blindly put everything fans demand into the game. Listening to fans means the devs should fix things that are not fun to play and rewarding for fans.

 

My thoughts on patch:

• Reduce Llanero adjacent strength to +2 (was +4).
  Seem irrelevant, Gran Columbia can conquer the map before this unit even unlocks/
  
  Drop Comandante Generals to no bonus movement (was +1 Movement).
  Good change, CG still seem OP though.
  
  Drop Hacienda to .5 Housing.
  Hacienda can be affected by Drought natural disasters.
  Kind of hilarious, Hacienda housing is definitely NOT why Gran Columbia is OP.
  
  Cost scaling for purchasing the Nihang unit (Tech progression scales to 4x its base cost).
  Very good change!
  
  Fixed an issue preventing forest fires and meteor showers from showing up as intended in non-Apocalypse games.
  I was wondering what happened to these, did not actually realize they disappeared for a few games. The idea of getting a Chariot our of a Meteorite still seems bizarre to me, seems like it should give Iron or Science from an immersion standpoint.
  
  Give 2, 4, and 6 gold as their envoy bonuses.
  Great change, but Commercial City States still suck. I'd rather have any randomly selected science or culture city state than Antioch, Bandar, and Lisbon combined in a game.
  
  Spy missions can no longer be performed in cities of a player you have an Alliance with.
  This seems bad for immersion. Every nation spies on its allies. A good alternative would be that a Spy being caught automatically ends the Alliance, which would discourage but not ban spying on Allies.
  
  Recruit Partisans mission now pillages the Neighborhood district (so that it cannot be spammed), and spawns only anti-cavalry units (weaker units than previously).
  Well, I have never built more than one Neighborhood so I consider them pretty irrelevant but this at least makes sense for immersion - partisans on average are more poorly equipped than regular armed forces.
  
  Scaling.
  Interested to see what the actual numbers are. Does this mean Aluminum for Lasers costs more each time you run the project, or goes up by game Era? This change could make Fez much better!
  
  Reduce interest in AI trading for diplomatic favor in the ancient and classical era.
  Great change. I admit to abusing this one pretty hard but it makes no sense to pay 14g for 1DF in the Ancient Era when there is nothing to even do with it/
  
  Increased desire for Oracle and Pyramid.
  Makes sense but make me sad since I always build these. Oh well, always possible to just go capture them now.
  
  Ensure AI repairs city defenses promptly.
  Seems like it won't matter since they can't repair while under attack and thus the city in question will probably just get captured before repair unlocks anyway.
  
  Improvements to protect Settler units.
  Finally! This is great, assuming the AI will truly now stop walking unescorted Settlers around even during active wars.

 

I like the GC changes. They're still a strong civ - universal +1 movement, and virtually universal +5 combat strength once they start getting their CG, but now you basically can't double-dip. And dropping the Hacienda and Llanero as someone said above, is like giving them half a cherry instead of a full cherry. Still a nice bonus, and GC is still a solid civ. Just not as ridiculous as they used to be. Agreed with above posters who wanted a small bonus to Maya, even just a small start bias change, but it's not like they're bottom tier.

Alliance/Spy change obviously the big un-announced tweak. Count me in as someone else who feels that was a little over the top, but it's a balancing act. I think the better fix would be to allow spying on allies, but if you're caught, it triggers an international incident and potentially an immediate betrayal emergency, although I guess it's easier to just ban it outright. Certainly makes the late game alliance game somewhat more interesting - if you can secure those alliances, that limits your spying options, but it acts as a pseudo-counter-spy since you have one less civ that might sabotage you.

 

As a sort-of-a-counterpoint, I like the fact movement speed was removed from Comandante General, and the universal +1 was kept. Limiting it to generals would also limit it to military units, which would in turn funnel Colombia even further into a single domination focus. As is, you can use the movement speed with civilian and religious units, which gives them some boost to other, less obvious victory conditions.

 

I'll take it.

What would be better is if alliances could be impacted by the accrual of grievances. But the current way alliances work is that no grievances are accrued. This is actually pretty lousy for a lot of reasons, like attacking suzerained CS's and converting cities, but no grievances for spying was a biggie.

It's an imperfect fix for sure, but it's something.

The concept you're speaking of is known as ludo-narrative dissonance.

Well, the narrative reason is that the establishment of an alliance entails sharing information at a level that would make it impossible to conduct operations covertly. Being able to perform missions on an ally would make a cool promotion for a spy, or maybe a policy card.

But again, this has more to do with whatever problem the game has with allowing grievances to accrue during an alliance.

 

As much as I am a little bit familiar with game designing I would nerf Gran Colombia this way: "Entering a new era grants a Comandante General, a unique type of Great Person BUT cannot recruit Great Generals". And perhaps Comandante General should give +7 Strenght not 5 with this restriction. End.
I don't like also a flat +1 movement bonus because I think good design should reward your adaptation to asymmetrical game conditions, not give just a flat bonus. But this is a different story. If the vast majority of people enjoy them perhaps they should be left alone. The problem is the devs decided to change it and changed it in a weird way. This is not game-breaking for me anyway.

 

I like the GC nerf NOT nerfing the movement, honestly. The +1 move thing is GC's defining feature. Let them nerf the other things. Perhaps Commandante should REPLACE Great Generals instead, so you can't get both? Although I wish they left the hacienda alone.

On the other hand I don't like the spy change. Allies in real life spy on each other a lot. Rather, I think they should make these changes:

- Allies can no longer see each other's spies
- If an ally invades a city state that their ally is suzerain of, or is caught on a spying mission, the victim can declare the alliance void instantly (optionally)

 

Start the game as a MP game but fill all slots but yours with AIs.