Patch Update by Greg @ 2K

[GenericPlayer]

GenericPlayer, read the rest of the updates.

Understood, so there is a new UI option to disable policy and promotion blocks.

I finished reading the rest of the thread and I see a few other people dissatisfied with

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

First up, I want to know what this exploit is exactly. I know that culture cost depends on the number of cities you have, but trading away cities is a pretty extreme measure to get a policy quicker.

For this to work, you would need to build a bunch of cities, accumulate thousands of culture points without adapting any new Policies, then trade away all cities (except capital) and then start claiming policies. Is this what people were doing? If so then forcing people to claim policies when they are earned should solve this problem already!

The other thing is that people who mention trading captured cities - in retrospect this is not a big deal since you typically puppet the city before selling or giving it away. The real issue is razing. When you raze a city, the game annexes the city to you and then sets it on fire. So with this change razing a city will increase culture cost, and then the new cost will stay there after the city is gone. I like the fact that razing now takes time, because it gives the player or the AI the chance to recapture the city, but annexing it creates a headache evident with this patch change - not to mention the headache of trying to build a national wonder while at war.

 

[Clement]

Hey I want me free internet cookie too!

I support Slowpoke's claim on the free internet cookie, your mod and thalassicus' mod have kept me playing thus far, thank you

 

[Louis XXIV]

Also, I do not know what trading away cities would be a culture exploit. Handing over a city to an AI is a pretty big deal, so there is a pretty big downside to it, too big for it to be called an exploit. I often sell cities I capture to the AI in the early game to raise money.

Say you are the French going for cultural victory. You build all your culture for each city through your UA. But you keep founding cities closely together in order to push the amount you need up so you won't adopt the next policy. Keep doing this until your culture is some absurd amount.

Then abandon or give away all your cities but your capitol. The amount of culture needed per policy becomes ridiculously low and you have a ton of excess culture from all those cities you used to have. That's where the exploit comes in.

EDIT: Woah! Christmas change!

 

[Bibor]

Hey I want me free internet cookie too!

Allright, you too then. I just said Thalass because they took like almost all of his changes except tile yields. The most obvious ones being the new national wonders *cough*

 

[Goodenuf]

* Policies must be selected the turn they are earned. (Added 11/18)

I like this; however the later SPs will be even more challenging to dive into since it takes forever to build enough SP culture later in the game... perhaps this too will be tweaked (or perhaps I missed it)?

 

[SuperJay]

Cool, the game may slowly be getting somewhat closer to what it should have been out of the box! Hooray for Firaxis?

 

[Louis XXIV]

I've been changing my play style to select them right away. It makes a dramatic difference early. I find myself choosing too many before piety. I might end up rethinking early game strategies to rush into the classical age, at least, unless I have a need for the early policies.

BTW, what's the formula for policy cost increases with new policies (not with new cities)? I'm not sure off the top of my head.

 

[Seek]

Allright, you too then. I just said Thalass because they took like almost all of his changes except tile yields. The most obvious ones being the new national wonders *cough*

And right when I completed a bunch of art for said wonders - oh well, hopefully he can use the Baths of Trajan for something else.

 

[Clement]

And right when I completed a bunch of art for said wonders - oh well, hopefully he can use the Baths of Trajan for something else.

Ah i'm sorry to hear that, on the plus side a labour of love is never wasted, especially art it's all good practice for whatever your next project may be.

 

[Louis XXIV]

And right when I completed a bunch of art for said wonders - oh well, hopefully he can use the Baths of Trajan for something else.

I guarantee someone will find a use for that. Nobody ever turns down art

 

[Varanid]

w00t.
I do still want them to work on tile yields; Thal's mod makes settle sites so much more important that it changes the gameplay (for the better!) and I'd love to see them adopt those yields, or at least close to it, along with his changes to the granary.

The only other thing is production; either production needs to be easier to get, or some of the early buildings should really have shield cost reduced substaintially. It's one thing for later buildings to be pricey, but monuments??

Tech slingshotting I think is overstated; you can slingshot through the military techs pretty quickly BUT good luck having the cash or production to build the pricey new units. I managed to get infantry in...1300? or something like that once and dear god, I couldn't build them in less than 20 turns in any city, cause I didn't have the production improvement stuff set up, and I'd spent my cash rush buying libraries and uni's to get my tech rate up.

 

[Slowpoke]

Yeah production is a bit low. Every mod has their own way of solving it atm. Economy mod and mine use lower building costs, thal uses engineering making more mine production.

 

[RedFury_au]

Didn't want to put this in a new thread so I'll post it here. Wouldn't firaxis be better off making the culture-points for new SP always the same, and using a penalty to the NET Culture applied towards the total per turn which is based on the number of cities you have?

So (and I"m just throwing numbers around here)
First policy is always at 100, next at 300, next at 600 ,etc.

If I have one city, I get 100% of culture/turn going towards the SP.
Two cities, 95%, 5 cities, 60%, etc.

That way it seems a lot of the exploits and/or problems with micro people are talking about with SP would disappear. And if properly documented in the UI I think this would actually be easier to understand since people would learn the SP levels for each new policy pretty quickly.

Please tell me if I'm missing something and this is indeed incorrect.

Cheers.

 

[MetHimPikeHoses]

looking forward to it... still waiting for the patch before i get involved in another large game.

 

[Ituralde]

Didn't want to put this in a new thread so I'll post it here. Wouldn't firaxis be better off making the culture-points for new SP always the same, and using a penalty to the NET Culture applied towards the total per turn which is based on the number of cities you have?

So (and I"m just throwing numbers around here)
First policy is always at 100, next at 300, next at 600 ,etc.

If I have one city, I get 100% of culture/turn going towards the SP.
Two cities, 95%, 5 cities, 60%, etc.

That way it seems a lot of the exploits and/or problems with micro people are talking about with SP would disappear. And if properly documented in the UI I think this would actually be easier to understand since people would learn the SP levels for each new policy pretty quickly.

Please tell me if I'm missing something and this is indeed incorrect.

Cheers.

To me this sounds like a very elegant solution. Much easier to understand than the current situation. Especially now that they added restraints here and there. Just imagine being forever culturally crippled after you lost half your cities in a war.
But then it's hard to imagine loosing half of your cities to the AI at any rate.

 

[Stretchy Man]

Have culture cost for policies never go down

So if I lose a few cities through war, I can never change to cultural victory?! Why not simply recalculate the culture cost for new policy only when a new policy is gained?

 

[Slowpoke]

Well, if you lose several cities, you're pretty screwed no matter what you do.

 

[krunsh]

If you are going for culture, then only use puppet when you conquer city. I guess it kinda make sense to limite the use of razing and conquest for non-military player.

Historicaly, razing a city completly is a realy big deal and it will force the use of puppet and city trading.

This patch look awesome so far.

 

[qyll]

Lookin' good. I guess I'm dropping down a difficulty level or two for this new patch.

Make non-happiness resources more robust and it'll be perfect.

 

[tommynt]

Main problems of this game dont get adressed:
- ai dumbness in trades, way too easy to abuse
- code, overall one and espacially the mp code - best gameplay doesnt help if u cant play the game ,,,
- buildings apart science ones too weak and too expensive
- 3 unit armies is all u need - too easy to never loose units vs ai
- best sps available only after ren age - making all early game only a race to ren
- happyness system is screwed and now seems to get even worse
anexed cities consuming happyness without option to make em stop use it even more (via disable growth), after this patch anexing seem to be pretty much a nono
roads costing money is dumb - worker turns are costs allready

all what this ppatch does is making it impossible to settle all world, what in fact the oposite of which I want do - when playing I game like this I WANT RULE THE WORLD

overall the main problem is this global happyness idea, building a new city making all other ones totaly stop producing ... WTH... total unrealistic, nonintuitive, unfun, even worse in war - people want me rather raze cities = commiting whole people/nation death then having em in own empire???

The main reason to do wars is to expand your empire - its have been like that in bboth real world and civ - now u make war to?? raze some cities?

If they keep hapyness system that way - the pop unhappy costs from anexed cities have to get away