Patch Update by Greg @ 2K

[Louis XXIV]

The only reason I'd avoid that is there are already plenty of penalties associated with keeping cities.

If they do that, I'd suggest allowing them to keep the buildings in the city. Maybe that would balance out.

 

[Zydor]

Yes, I think this makes it clear that 2K rushed Firaxis, but that the team is dedicated to making the game work for the community.

I wonder if this will satisfy people? ....

Not in the least - some maybe.

I suspect most will not be satisfied until they deliver a working enhanced game. Its even more clear they didnt before on first release, as if that wasnt clear enough already. The sheer size of the patch makes it abundently clear what they also think of their initial release game.

Besides the very obvious point of yet to deliver on prior promises not yet kept, they also now have to contend with a deep simmering anger in some quarters that they abused the faith of a long standing and loyal Franchise Fanbase. It was verging on blatent theft of the its cover price in exchange for a pile of unacceptable *expletive deleted*. Its irrelevant to say all the gaming houses are at it. If anyone thinks that was somehow acceptable or laudable, then there is some strange standards floating around out there.

That there is huge work going on rectifying the mess, is, to say the least, highly commendable, there is no doubt. Even more so if it all hangs together when the "Patch" - effectively another Version release by another name - is released.

Having stomped on the Fanbase once in the disgraceful antics of that initial release, they now have a bigger mountain to climb to regain Trust. The latter is a two way thing - even more so after the way they abused their side of the unspoken deal with fans and advance sales. Will they, I reckon so, but lets not start with the rose tinted glasses syndrome, because this time there will be no second chances.

 

[Buccaneer]

Remind me again the length of time between Civ4 initial release and BtS 3.19?

 

[bryanw1995]

New features are nice and all, but how many technical issues will be addressed in this new patch?
There are a whole multitude of them over in the tech support section. Myself, i have had game stopping issues with graphic glitches and the game freezing on me when my empire grows large on a huge map. Who cares about new features if the game locks up, or becomes unplayable due to graphic issues.

I guess it's a wait and see situation.

IMO, Civ 5 has a lot more technical issues than Civ 4 did.
And talking to customer service at 2K is like talking to a brick wall.

agreed about cust service at 2k.

did you try a huge map right after cIV came out? the athlon single core that I had at that time struggled on larger maps back then, and my current (very high end) rig struggles on larger maps now as well. I'll just upgrade when bulldozer/sandy bridge come out, get a faster gpu, and play the larger maps then. btw, the memory issues that are being addressed with the patch should help quite a bit.

 

[ohioastronomy]

Remind me again the length of time between Civ4 initial release and BtS 3.19?

I never got around to BTS and had a great time with vanilla Civ 4. So I don't think they're close to the same.

There are some nice ideas here, and it's good that they're listening to folks here (although still not talking with us.) The various bug fixes and tweaks appear uniformly good. I remain concerned that the changes are mostly punitive - the only "positive" change I've seen so far is faster medium-sized city growth. All of the rest are "this gives you less happy, this unit is weaker, etc. etc.

In other words, it is not the changes here per se; it's that I think they need to couple them with things like better tile yields, faster buildings, fewer penalties for larger cities, etc. to make the game more fun. And we'll also have to see how these work in practice - e.g. if the bidding war thing makes the AI undefeatable in a cash win at high difficulty levels.

 

[Renergy]

This is no longer a patch. It's a new game.

This.

Actually, apart from the new buildings, I think the game is missing a "Great Entertainer" or "Great Actor" that would be able to construct a tile improvement increasing happiness. That would mean adding a specialis slot to some building - well actually maybe theaters could have a slot for "Great Actor", and stadiums for "Great Sportsman". Would further encourage big cities instead of ICS.

 

[Superluminal]

* Unhappiness beyond a certain point breeds rebels within your empire, based on the number of cities a player has. (Added 12/3)

Sweet

 

[PieceOfMind]

Remind me again the length of time between Civ4 initial release and BtS 3.19?

In case it wasn't a rhetorical question...

Vanilla: October 25, 2005

BtS: July 18, 2007

BtS patch 3.19 (final): June 10, 2009

 

[Vlade Divac]

Not in the least - some maybe.

I suspect most will not be satisfied until they deliver a working enhanced game. Its even more clear they didnt before on first release, as if that wasnt clear enough already. The sheer size of the patch makes it abundently clear what they also think of their initial release game.

Besides the very obvious point of yet to deliver on prior promises not yet kept, they also now have to contend with a deep simmering anger in some quarters that they abused the faith of a long standing and loyal Franchise Fanbase. It was verging on blatent theft of the its cover price in exchange for a pile of unacceptable *expletive deleted*. Its irrelevant to say all the gaming houses are at it. If anyone thinks that was somehow acceptable or laudable, then there is some strange standards floating around out there.

That there is huge work going on rectifying the mess, is, to say the least, highly commendable, there is no doubt. Even more so if it all hangs together when the "Patch" - effectively another Version release by another name - is released.

Having stomped on the Fanbase once in the disgraceful antics of that initial release, they now have a bigger mountain to climb to regain Trust. The latter is a two way thing - even more so after the way they abused their side of the unspoken deal with fans and advance sales. Will they, I reckon so, but lets not start with the rose tinted glasses syndrome, because this time there will be no second chances.

I'm thinking you're being just a tad dramatic...

 

[poncratias]

Whooohoo

reload landmark system !!!!!


You people don't know what this means!!!!!! This is so great!!!

 

[demeryt]

Great changes, it seems that only 2 things/issues that have been reported by the community a lot haven't been touched so far:

1) Bonus resource yields
2) Building costs

Ad. 1) With the new maritime bonus nerf the tile yield balance seems to be more OK now (Trading Post spamming will be limited because you will need more farmed tiles to make up for the smaller amount of food coming from maritime CS).

But it has been raised before and I like this idea too: they might want to make the bonus resources' yields higher, so that settling near them is more meaningful and desirable. Like: wheat +2 food, cow +1 food +1 hammer, bananas +1 food +1 coin, etc.
Now everything's just +1 food (except fish?) and that's

a) boring
b) unrewarding

might as well put a "+1 apple" icon on terrain here and there.

Ad. 2) Some buildings and units being too expensive has been argued a lot, to a point that in some cases a unit might become obsolete before / right after it's built (was it spearman?), or buildings that are so ridiculously expensive (research lab?) that it's seldom viable to actually construct them at all. I didn't research into this one myself, I'm just repeating what's been said.

 

[scl004]

* Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). (Added 12/3)

I absolutely HATE this change. I'm not aware of the culture cost exploit, but this change is going to destroy the ability to capture a city and then give/trade it away to my civ of choice. Now the only effective options will be raise/liberate/puppet/annex.

I like being able to conquer territory and then assign it to my civ of choice, often returning cities to previously conquered nations. It's sort of like what the United States did in World War II.

Terrible, terrible change. Please reconsider.

EDIT: I'm really pissed about this. My style of play, which is far from an exploit, and is altruistic in nature, will be effectively ruined. It means the only option post-conquest if you don't want to keep a city is to raise it. That's just terrible.

 

[Seek]

Whooohoo

reload landmark system !!!!!


You people don't know what this means!!!!!! This is so great!!!

It's true: I have no idea what that means, care to enlighten me?

(I'm guessing it doesn't refer to the Great Artist's tile improvement)

 

[bryanw1995]

Not in the least - some maybe.

I suspect most will not be satisfied until they deliver a working enhanced game. Its even more clear they didnt before on first release, as if that wasnt clear enough already. The sheer size of the patch makes it abundently clear what they also think of their initial release game.

Besides the very obvious point of yet to deliver on prior promises not yet kept, they also now have to contend with a deep simmering anger in some quarters that they abused the faith of a long standing and loyal Franchise Fanbase. It was verging on blatent theft of the its cover price in exchange for a pile of unacceptable *expletive deleted*. Its irrelevant to say all the gaming houses are at it. If anyone thinks that was somehow acceptable or laudable, then there is some strange standards floating around out there.

That there is huge work going on rectifying the mess, is, to say the least, highly commendable, there is no doubt. Even more so if it all hangs together when the "Patch" - effectively another Version release by another name - is released.

Having stomped on the Fanbase once in the disgraceful antics of that initial release, they now have a bigger mountain to climb to regain Trust. The latter is a two way thing - even more so after the way they abused their side of the unspoken deal with fans and advance sales. Will they, I reckon so, but lets not start with the rose tinted glasses syndrome, because this time there will be no second chances.

wow, exaggerate much? devs get all the chances they can handle until they run out of money. clearly, ciV is already a moneymaker for the dev so they'll get plenty of additional chances even if the patch doesn't live up to some very vocal user's hopes/dreams. Fortunately for us, the patch does look very promising. It might even get it on par with some of the better mods out there!

 

[PieceOfMind]

I absolutely HATE this change. I'm not aware of the culture cost exploit, but this change is going to destroy the ability to capture a city and then give/trade it away to my civ of choice. Now the only effective options will be raise/liberate/puppet/annex.

I like being able to conquer territory and then assign it to my civ of choice, often returning cities to previously conquered nations. It's sort of like what the United States did in World War II.

Terrible, terrible change. Please reconsider.

EDIT: I'm really pissed about this. My style of play, which is far from an exploit, and is altruistic in nature, will be effectively ruined. It means the only option post-conquest if you don't want to keep a city is to raise it. That's just terrible.

Hang on a sec. I'm not sure that if you get a city then give it away, when you acquire another city it would go up again. Unless they muck up bad, I'm assuming they'd make culture threshold based on the largest number of cities you've ever had.

 

[sketch162000]

This is what happens when the community refuses to be complacent. Power to the players!

I'm really looking forward to the rebel feature!

 

[Wombleburger]

The idea of too much unhappiness generating rebels SOUNDS cool, but in reality, won't this change make life difficult ONLY for the player, not the AI. AFAIK, on any level worth playing this game, the AI gets a big bonus to happiness, so we'll likely never see rebels emerging in AI's civs.

 

[Louis XXIV]

The fear is that, when you capture the city, the SP cost will go up. You give it away a minute later, it will stay at that new level. You can puppet cities before giving them away, if I'm not mistaken, which will help.

Still, perhaps they could compromise by making sure the SP cost doesn't recalculate until the end of the turn.

EDIT: The reason for the rebels is some players have a strategy of ignoring all happiness. They can have -30 and be completely indifferent. The AI, by contrast, is programmed to try and get happiness (trade for luxuries, build Colosseums, etc).

 

[Toulouse]

Thanks to everyone who had the moxie to criticize the game, strip it down and expose it for what it was at release. We may get a quality product yet!

Am I the only one desperate for some limited stacking ability in Civ V?

 

[Sullla]

These are mostly good changes. They will improve some of the major flaws with the current gameplay. At the same time, I can't help but feel as though the developers are throwing large Band-aids over the real issues in the core game design, which aren't being addressed (can't be addressed?) I'm also bothered by what several other posters have mentioned, the fact that the designers are simply nerfing all of the most popular strategies rather than working to create alternate viable paths to playing the game. Still, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Lot of these notes are pretty vague and could mean a number of different things.

Heard those promises of improved AI before, I'll need to see it to believe it.