Predictions and wishlist for first patch

WiseGreen

Warlord
Joined
Jul 11, 2011
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253
Some bugs and design decisions viewed as fails have already been posted by many, specially in the first impressions thread. So what do you expect/wish to be corrected on the first pacth? When do you think we can expect it?

I'm really wishing some UI elements are brought back/implemented right away. Demographics screen, last construction/unit built in city screen, and some indication about quest decisions tied to buildings' bonuses in the game (at least in the Civilopedia, ideally a tooltip as you're building the first one as well).
 
Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions
 
Obvious ones:

- Trade routes: Assigning them is too tedious. I tried playing a wide empire for a domination victory, and the tedium was excruciating.

- Miasma: Too hard to see.
 
They will rebalance trade routes in some way. I'm hoping for 1 trade route per city from the depot (and kill the autoplanet traderoute you can get via the quest). Maybe they could add in an additional trade route later in the tree for the endgame, but that would probably still be tôo much.

Also, rework the trade route Interface. In the late game I spend too much time microing obvious things.

I hope they work on some of the wonders as well, some of them are comically bad (+9 Production for 1500 Hammers; that't never going to work out.
 
IMO "Artists" are obviously unbalanced. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson with France in Vanilla Civ 5 getting +2 culture per city. +1 culture/+1 health would be fine.
 
Tweak the explorer problems with the AI. (there's bug thread on this)
Improve the AI's use of naval units generally.
Nerf surveillance Web (also another thread on this)
 
IMO "Artists" are obviously unbalanced. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson with France in Vanilla Civ 5 getting +2 culture per city. +1 culture/+1 health would be fine.
I don't know why artists even get +1 health anyway, since it's one of the key early-game limitations, along with culture being in short supply, so they have a colonist type that gives both?

Make artists just +2 culture, and bump Aristocrats up to +4 energy and keep +1 health and they would be a lot more interesting choice.
 
Quality of life changes:
Don't close the purchase screen after every buy

Warning for unit ending turn in miasma under 30 HP(with move left). Maybe not if fortifying.

Upgrade roads to rails button for workers(quasi automate that just focuses on upgrading the roads)

If really ambitious, i'd like a "connect all cities with roads" button as well, rather than or as well as the currently annoying/picky route to, that just puts a worker or workers on road building duty.

Make the trade route screen MUCH more efficient/obvious( just use the yield icon, not the entire name, to save space. Make it clear what i'm getting and what they're getting. Make it easier to organize. make a "redo" button that doesn't even bring the menu up.).

Miasma more obvious. I've gotten used to it, but I really shouldn't need to, and I still screw up.

Fix the worker automation. I hate manually controlling all my workers, even though it's obviously better than automation. That said I could still usually win in Civ 5 with a couple on automate just to keep it from being something I need to deal with so often. They're especially stupid with the changes to tiles/how things work, so they need a look.

Option to raze the outpost if you have the liberation army perk. This is seriously a downside otherwise in many situations when dealing with the AI, where now I need to decide if i am going to wait for it to become a city(and lose more units) or take a city in a spot where i absolutely don't want it. Thats just awful.

Strategic view.

Easier way to tell if a city has satellites, and to select them(even if i'm missing something, it should really be more obvious. I've lost them in older games by putting them to sleep).

Path to site while avoiding miasma option. I'd see this as a luxury, but often i'm just sending explorers to digs, which is a multi turn no brain thing that I shouldn't need to micro, but since the miasma is an issue(and the dig is covered) i have to try and do all the micro to keep it out. A "take the less efficient but safer route" option would be nice for those of us trying to just have fun and not be hyper competitive.

Fewer clicks/scrolling on spying. This is super tedious for what should be simple. Get me some non crap drop downs and quick clicking.

Balance-

There's so many places they could start, I don't even care, just as long as there's quite a bit. If there isn't anything, there better be a note at the bottom stating they're planning a big one shortly with screenshots or something. It's obvious what's wrong at this point, but fixing it could go a lot of different routes and be quite difficult, so i can accept that, but if they ignore it I will be displeased.

Fleshing out-

See balance. There's a lot that could be done to improve aliens, for example, that wouldn't even need to be DLC level of content, and would make the game a lot better. Again, i see it as a very large project, but they better at least acknowledge this stuff.
 
- Trade routes first priority. Max 1/city, remove autoplant quest, and nerf them. Make maxed out stations actually good trade partners.

-Increase health penalties - A LOT. Make some earlier health-improvements, with a trade-off (for example put biowells earlier in the tech tree but increase maintenance). Or make health tradeable to give diplomacy some much needed use.

- Improve wonders.

- Buff specialists and put in at least a few more buildings/wonders that give %-modifiers so you can specialize cities more.

- Nerf the "artists" seeding option.

- Increase demands for affinity wonders from 13 to 15-16.

- Make it impossible to do the contact victory so early if you're lucky with progenitor ruins. Put another prerequisite for the contect victory in the tech tree.

- Also make it impossible to get several huge affinity upgrades from ruins. I don't want to win because I was lucky!

- Make techs you steal pop up with the quote and info, not only a notification in the corner.

- Agree with OP on demographics and "last constructed building/unit" info

- Make Apollo level harder. If they must give the AI more bonuses, do it.
 
- Show effects of building-related quest decisions in city production option mouseovers (now they only show the basic effects)

- Redo previous trade route button (preferably with a key shortcut as well)

- Auto upgrade roads to maglines worker action

- Add at least basic scoring / demographics information to the victory screen to make winning last longer than 1 second

- Purity victory is way too tedious, also settlers cannot be called when a military unit is standing on top of the exodus gate (maybe this was intentional). Also, I happened to read about its mechanics here, but I don't know how long it would have taken me to realize what I needed to do to actually win Purity. Make this clearer in the quest log
 
There are so many things that are just half-working or plain broke, it's hard to predict what they'll do first...
 
Trade route yield change

Internal
Receiving City gets: 20% of sending city base-10% of receiving city base (not less than 0)
Sending city gets: Smaller of 20% sending city base or 10% receiving city base

External
Receiving city gets: 10% of sending city base + 5% of receiving city base
Sending city gets: 10% of sending city base +10% of receiving city base

UI has little yield buttons at the top for sorting..
Previous route is at top. and highlighted
 
I'm not going to repeat things that have been said before, but I also add

-Fix aliens aggro behavior, as it stands now it's a challenge to get them angry and there's a lot of loopholes to kill them without any repercussions (I suspect there are bugs involved, sorry for the pun).

-Because of how the AI mechanic works, things with the Civ engine only become heated once all the land is taken and empires are running at full regime. In a word you can call it "endgame".
But there is no "endgame" in Civ BE, victory is achieved way too early while empires are still in development. Either speed up early expansion and development (hardest way to solve the problem) or make it so victories require more expansion in the tech web and\or higher affinity level.

-Fix AI behavior so that they are more likely to build armies (give them bonuses for that if necessary at any difficulty above normal).

-Make more meaningful wonders. A wonder should give benefits that cannot be obtained through any regular buildings. What's the deal with the "New Terran Myth"? You can't make wonders that give bonuses that are 5 times less relevant than a trade route. Come on!

-Include a minimap playback feature at the end of the game. You eventually did that for Civ V, please do it for Civ BE as well.
 
Liberation Army should have an additional bonus of reducing martial law times. It's unusable in the games I've played.
 
Liberation Army should have an additional bonus of reducing martial law times. It's unusable in the games I've played.

Well I think Liberation Army should be
Once you destroy a station or an outpost you receive a free colonist in that tile.
 
I only need 2 changes:

1. Previous Trade Route

This has to be easier to see, and easier to re-assign. Either have the Previous Route at the top (always) or have Previous Route in Bold and another color or something so it's much easier to spot.

2. Last Produced Notification

There HAS to be some notification of what you just produced in a city. Very important for sprawling empires.
 
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