Patch Update by Greg @ 2K

[Civsassin]

@Civsassin:
I am very sceptical whether the features you mentioned will be scaling with map sizes.

On smaller maps it is still easy to get access to almost all luxuries, so happiness shouldn't be that big a deal.
On bigger maps though I fear that they will not only kill ICS (which would be ok for me) but bigger empires in general.

And the way to deal with your opponents now will be razing, razing, razing. It will become a game about genocide.

I don't think that it will kill big empires. I believe the intent is to slow down the ability to grow too quickly where the game becomes a joke. I've actually seen this with aggressive AI and not just human players. However, it remains to be seen how well the developers put together and test the patch. It certainly is a step in the right direction IMHO.

 

[Zydor]

I hope it does not end up that severe. Killing ICS exploits is understandable and fair enough, but nerfing the ability to build big empires at all other than by "kill thy neighbour" will drive a coach and horses through a Core Tenant of Civ - Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time. If it does become that severe, and razing etc is needed, thats not going to be popular in the non warmonger camp, but would fit to a degree the changes that have already occured re non warmongering. Wait and see I guess - could be interesting ....

Regards
Zy

 

[Horizons]

Well, it sounds like the whole global happiness to replace 1) city health, 2) war weariness, 3) corruption, 4) city maintenance, 5) revolt and foreign conquest, 6) city-level happiness, and half a dozen other things, was a bad idea. ho-hum.

 

[bonafide11]

I hope it does not end up that severe. Killing ICS exploits is understandable and fair enough, but nerfing the ability to build big empires at all other than by "kill thy neighbour" will drive a coach and horses through a Core Tenant of Civ - Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time. If it does become that severe, and razing etc is needed, thats not going to be popular in the non warmonger camp, but would fit to a degree the changes that have already occured re non warmongering. Wait and see I guess - could be interesting ....

Regards
Zy

I really don't think it'll be that severe. I believe it'll still be beneficial to build many cities, but now it'll be easier and more beneficial to let them grow instead of building excessive amounts of cities and keeping them at size 4.

 

[Celevin]

I really don't think it'll be that severe. I believe it'll still be beneficial to build many cities, but now it'll be easier and more beneficial to let them grow instead of building excessive amounts of cities and keeping them at size 4.

I think it all depends on the Maritime nerf. It will be the one that stops me from building a new city and having it skyrocket to size 4 / size 8 in no time.

On a side note, if all they do is a straight nerf of the values but keep the weightings, Maritime city states won't be properly fixed. They benefit large empires too much compared to small empires. We'll either see the nerf not being severe enough to stop ICS, or Maritimes being worthless to everything but very large empires.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I really don't think it'll be that severe. I believe it'll still be beneficial to build many cities, but now it'll be easier and more beneficial to let them grow instead of building excessive amounts of cities and keeping them at size 4.

Not really...
Before, a city up to Size X(X depending on buildings+policies) could be net 0 Happiness

Now, a city of ANY size will be net unhappiness.(probably, there may be ways for cities to become net 0 unhappiness... New Happiness National Wonder?... Theocracy?)

Theocracy Could be the new ICS... However it would favor BIG cities
10 pop city, and up to stadium -> 10 building happiness-8 pop unhappiness-2 city unhappiness=0

So Late game Theocracies can take over the world (or meritocratic/Forbidden Palace Theocracies) or

 

[Civsassin]

Well, it sounds like the whole global happiness to replace 1) city health, 2) war weariness, 3) corruption, 4) city maintenance, 5) revolt and foreign conquest, 6) city-level happiness, and half a dozen other things, was a bad idea. ho-hum.

Actually, that's not most people's conclusion. The feature just needs to be balanced, and it requires the experiences of the civ V gaming community to identify those features that need to be tweaked, which is exactly what's been done.

 

[Civsassin]

Not really...
Before, a city up to Size X(X depending on buildings+policies) could be net 0 Happiness

Now, a city of ANY size will be net unhappiness.(probably, there may be ways for cities to become net 0 unhappiness... New Happiness National Wonder?... Theocracy?)

Theocracy Could be the new ICS... However it would favor BIG cities
10 pop city, and up to stadium -> 10 building happiness-8 pop unhappiness-2 city unhappiness=0

So Late game Theocracies can take over the world (or meritocratic/Forbidden Palace Theocracies) or

It's not going to kill big empires; it will just slow down players' expansion. You'll be able to get to a huge empire, but it will take you longer to get there. I am very interested in seeing what bonus the circus maximus national wonder provides.

 

[RobAnybody]

I have to say that this patch will definitely kill the ICS strategy.

What makes you think that? Unless Meritocracy & the Forbidden Palace give you absolutely nothing to offset #-of-cities-unhappiness, won't you still basically just need a Colloseum to sustain a pop-4 city? They're getting nerfed, not removed from the game.

Where's the disincentive to just keep dropping little city after little city? I may not be able to drop 30 of them, but instead maybe 20, or 25. So a little worse? Maybe, I guess. Definitely kill? Nahhhh.

This patch will not only eliminate the ability to use the ICS exploit, it will also slow down human players' abilities to expand endlessly because of happiness issues. It sounds like some players didn't mind getting their empires "livid" as the advisor puts it because they were still head and shoulders ahead of the AI. With the revolting being added, it sounds like they are trying to penalize a player severly for letting his/her empire remain angry. I think this is a good thing. If you are going to have these varying degrees of unhappiness, there must be severe penalties for ignoring them.

Depends on how strong these "rebels" are. If they're not an overwhelming threat, then they sound like a good way to farm Great Generals while training your troops. You're telling me that in addition to ignoring all the other downsides of really low Happiness, you're now going to spawn free experience for my troops around my cities? Sure, I may need to maintain 3 more troops than I used to to deal with them, but hey... sign me up. Is there a way to increase their frequency of appearance?

 

[Civsassin]

We shall see what the changes do to the ICS strategy, but I tend to think that the developers are targeting it in this patch, which suggests that the changes will have a big effect on expansion particularly to marginalize the exploit and slow expansionists.

It will be interesting to see how they employ rebellion. In civ IV, rebels could ruin improvements around your city and destroy buildings in your city. I would think that it would be similar.

 

[manu-fan]

This patch looks like it will nerf the ICS 'exploit', but will be fine for a general expansionist game. I like this because I'm a general expansionist anyway. I never keep my cities at size 2 etc. anyway, so I'm very happy about the patch changes. I might actually have to build something other than Trading Posts if they nerf Maritime also

Cheers.

 

[atteSmythe]

Now, a city of ANY size will be net unhappiness.(probably, there may be ways for cities to become net 0 unhappiness... New Happiness National Wonder?... Theocracy?)

Theocracy Could be the new ICS... However it would favor BIG cities
10 pop city, and up to stadium -> 10 building happiness-8 pop unhappiness-2 city unhappiness=0

So Late game Theocracies can take over the world (or meritocratic/Forbidden Palace Theocracies) or

Theocracy is good early, but Freedom is where it's at. Each specialist only produces .5, but still allows a building to generate 1.

 

[Civsassin]

This patch looks like it will nerf the ICS 'exploit', but will be fine for a general expansionist game. I like this because I'm a general expansionist anyway. I never keep my cities at size 2 etc. anyway, so I'm very happy about the patch changes. I might actually have to build something other than Trading Posts if they nerf Maritime also

Cheers.

I'm in your camp. I think the patch is going to be good for the game. I also think that people may have to drop a level in some cases as the AI performance is improved.

 

[City Raider]

Yeah, I don't think this will hurt ICS at all. You can still have an infinite number of happiness neutral cities. You still have Meritocracy and FP, which will provide some benefit, unless they completely remove them or alter what they do (no longer provide any happiness bonus). You also have Military Caste, which provided 1 happiness per city, you just need to stick a unit there. But it essentially functions the same way as meritocrary (assuming it got nerfed to not being usable.) Or the one policy that provides happiness for universities, etc. There are ways to get happiness.

Essentially a size 4 city can get full value out of a collosseum and so you only need to find or do 1 or two other things (wonders, national wonders, or SP) to make up the remaining 1-2 happiness to get your happiness neutral cities. This doesn't even cound luxuries.

Also Maritimes play no real effect with ICS. Yes they make it "easier" or allow quicker growth, but they aren't needed at all. I often play with no city states (to cut down on computer lag late game) and have no trouble running ICS empires. Maybe not as effecient as if I did have maritimes, but I can still run 30-40 cities on my continent with ICS spacing.

Edit:

My solution to ICS would be to have a minimum distance for cities. IE, since any city can in theory take up three rings you shouldn't be able to place a 2nd city within the 3rd ring. That means cities are guaranteed to have at least 3 tiles between them (slightly hurting ICS). Also running smaller empires should be boosted, not punished for ICSing. Another example, science per pop should increase, 1 beaker per pop for size 1-10, 2 beakers per pop for size 11-15, 3 beakers for 16-20, 4 for 21-25, etc. Or some variation of increasing beakers per pop level. Obviously you have to rescale the tech costs, but here it quickly becomes beneficial to have larger cities rather then dozens of size 4-6.

 

[Zydor]

..... I also think that people may have to drop a level in some cases as the AI performance is improved.

I suspect thats vertually a racing certainty - which would be no bad thing.

Deity really should be a swine to crack, not a personal status stamp able to be obtained via a strategy cookbook. The latter can happen if the Bar is set too low.

Regards
Zy

 

[atteSmythe]

My solution to ICS would be to have a minimum distance for cities. IE, since any city can in theory take up three rings you shouldn't be able to place a 2nd city within the 3rd ring. That means cities are guaranteed to have at least 3 tiles between them (slightly hurting ICS). Also running smaller empires should be boosted, not punished for ICSing. Another example, science per pop should increase, 1 beaker per pop for size 1-10, 2 beakers per pop for size 11-15, 4 beakers for 16-20, 8 for 21-25, etc. Or some variation of increasing beakers per pop level. Obviously you have to rescale the tech costs, but here it quickly becomes beneficial to have larger cities rather then dozens of size 4-6.

I doubt the science thing would help. By the time you get to having a number of cities large enough that their giant populations are contributing significantly to science, there will be nothing left to research.

Also, just growing from size 10-11 takes 121 food (+2 science under your system). That same 121 food would grow a new city to size 5 (+5 science, plus probably a library by that point, adding +3 (for now) from each scientist and another 2 for the population, +13 science total unless I've messed something up). So for a big city to grow its science at the same rate that a little city can grow its science, it will have to have a much larger food surplus. More food tiles means less gold and production from large cities, by proportion, than small cities.

Since food surplus is applied to settler production, a large city with that much surplus would best use it to create settlers to found new cities.

Edit: I seriously underplayed the science from the extra pop in the large city above. It wasn't right of me to include building bonuses for the small building, but not the large one, but I don't really have the time to fix it right now

 

[City Raider]

Yeah, city growth numbers need to be changed, in terms of food.
Techs would also need to be rescaled. I'd personally like to see more techs and longer research times throughout the tech tree.

I justhope they make smaller builder empires more appealing rather then "ICS is bad so lets try to harm that".

 

[Dermo]

My solution to ICS would be to have a minimum distance for cities. IE, since any city can in theory take up three rings you shouldn't be able to place a 2nd city within the 3rd ring. That means cities are guaranteed to have at least 3 tiles between them (slightly hurting ICS). Also running smaller empires should be boosted, not punished for ICSing. Another example, science per pop should increase, 1 beaker per pop for size 1-10, 2 beakers per pop for size 11-15, 3 beakers for 16-20, 4 for 21-25, etc. Or some variation of increasing beakers per pop level. Obviously you have to rescale the tech costs, but here it quickly becomes beneficial to have larger cities rather then dozens of size 4-6.

Just my opinion but I see no reason why (some) cities cannot be placed immediately adjacent to each other. Depending on how exactly you define a city, there are a number of real world examples. The problem as I see it is with the 'infinite' part.
But other than implementing a global food supply, I'm not sure how to fit this into the game

 

[City Raider]

Just my opinion but I see no reason why (some) cities cannot be placed immediately adjacent to each other. Depending on how exactly you define a city, there are a number of real world examples. The problem as I see it is with the 'infinite' part.
But other than implementing a global food supply, I'm not sure how to fit this into the game

Gameplayability. (or replayability)
Why give a player 36 hexes per city to work if the optimum game play is to ignore that and pile city on top of city?

I don't mind the occassional ICS spacing or severe overlap if needed, but when it becomes the obvious best way to play (generates more gold, more happiness, more science) that's where spacing become the problem.

Edit:

I agree with you about the infinite part.

 

[Maktaka]

As much for my own benefit as for just posting, some things I can think of which will allow for larger empires (in terms of city count that is):

Luxury resources will obviously offset the base 2 unhappy per city. 2 luxuries support 5 cities. With 15 luxury resources in the game, that's 37.5 cities worth of unhappiness from the number of cities. Keeping the city count below this, happiness from wonders, and global happiness from policies or unhappiness reductions from policies will let you push this eve higher.

Legalism in Tradition social policy. -33% happiness in the capital, combined with +50% growth in capital, combined with multiple Maritime civs (which should still favor capital growth even after the nerf I think), means you get plenty of population to work with in the capital but frees up the unhappiness that would normally be generated to allow an extra city or two and size 6 and 12 respectively.

Notre Dame. +5 happiness that bypasses the population limit. That's an extra 2.5 cities.

Hanging Gardens. +3 global happiness.

Eiffel Tower. +8 global happiness.

The new Circus Maximus. We don't know the specifics yet, but whatever it will be it will bypass the population limit.

Forbidden Palace. It'll be nerfed down from -50% unhappy due to city count, but it'll still offset some of your per-city unhappiness.

Meritocracy in Liberty. This happiness is applied globally which bypasses the population limit. This is getting nerfed, but it'll still allow for more cities by reducing the unhappiness hit per city.

Theocracy in Piety. Already covered in previous posts, but a nice boost for growth-focused cities.

Freedom. Half unhappiness from specialists, so 4 specialists completely offset the per-city unhappiness in that city. Combine with Civil Society for a larger population and Theocracy for even less unhappy from that population for a large happy population of specialists.

Planned Economy in Order. No sign of this getting nerfed, so this will still halve the per-city unhappiness. Combine with Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy and you should still see a newly founded city hooked into your trade network more than covering the cost of the city's base unhappiness. It won't totally cover the cost of the first citizen as well anymore, but buying a Colosseum right off the bat will take care of that and the next 3 citizens added.


Could you still do ICS? Yes, but not without at least a one late-game social policy I think, and you can't save up early culture for those anymore. We'll see though, if not Planned Economy and Freedom will probably be next on the chopping block.