(Rising Tides) Quill 18's Chungsu Gameplay

[SupremacyKing2]

Re: affinities

If quill18's live stream is any indication, it will be much easier to get affinity points in Rising Tide. It won't be like in base BE where you only get affinity points in big chunks, only when you get a particular leaf tech. In Rising Tide, you will get some points in many branch and leaf techs. In addition, there are a lot of new affinity quests that the players gets from the very beginning and all the way into the late game. Getting affinities in RT is a much more continuous process. So, I don't think ranking up in an affinity will be as difficult as in base BE.

 

[Ryika]

VoD of yesterday's livestream is available too btw:
http://www.twitch.tv/quill18/v/18325759

Plays a whole game with the same sponsor over the course of ~5.5 hours.

Re: affinities

If quill18's live stream is any indication, it will be much easier to get affinity points in Rising Tide. It won't be like in base BE where you only get affinity points in big chunks, only when you get a particular leaf tech. In Rising Tide, you will get some points in many branch and leaf techs. In addition, there are a lot of new affinity quests that the players gets from the very beginning and all the way into the late game. Getting affinities in RT is a much more continuous process. So, I don't think ranking up in an affinity will be as difficult as in base BE.

Yes, it seems like affinity progress has been sped up by a lot. If I catched that correctly, ALL Branch techs that give affinity give exactly 7 and ALL leaf techs that give affinity now give exactly 20, which... basically means that one will probably never ever ever EVER again want to research any tier 3 tech.

 

[omniclast]

The War Score system looks like it has a serious bug. In ep6, Quill again tried to make peace with an AI, this time with PAC, and the War Score forced her to give away her two remaining cities which she could not do. The same thing happened with NSA when he had only one city remaining. So not only does the war score *not* make AIs wartime decisions more transparent, it appears it actively prevents them from making peace when they are really far behind.

As we feared, there does not appear to be any way to change the peace terms, even if you're winning and you want to offer more favorable terms. This seems like a terrible design choice in every way. Quill got super frustrated with it, because it essentially forced him into total war or nothing.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

VoD of yesterday's livestream is available too btw:
http://www.twitch.tv/quill18/v/18325759

Plays a whole game with the same sponsor over the course of ~5.5 hours.


Yes, it seems like affinity progress has been sped up by a lot. If I catched that correctly, ALL Branch techs that give affinity give exactly 7 and ALL leaf techs that give affinity now give exactly 20, which... basically means that one will probably never ever ever EVER again want to research any tier 3 tech.

Well you need ~283 xp to reach the full lvl 15 affinity(assuming they didn't change level cost), which means ~10 leaf techs (27 from leaf+stem)

So you might need to get 1 3rd ring if you don't get enough quests.
If they want them all to be the same it should be closer to 4 and 10 ie getting ALL the tech points barely gets you lvl 15

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The War Score system looks like it has a serious bug. In ep6, Quill again tried to make peace with an AI, this time with PAC, and the War Score forced her to give away her two remaining cities which she could not do. The same thing happened with NSA when he had only one city remaining. So not only does the war score *not* make AIs wartime decisions more transparent, it appears it actively prevents them from making peace when they are really far behind.

As we feared, there does not appear to be any way to change the peace terms, even if you're winning and you want to offer more favorable terms. This seems like a terrible design choice in every way. Quill got super frustrated with it, because it essentially forced him into total war or nothing.

The war score mechanic seemed like a cool idea but it is completely broken at the moment. Let's hope they fix it quick.

 

[Ryika]

Well you need ~283 xp to reach the full lvl 15 affinity(assuming they didn't change level cost), which means ~10 leaf techs (27 from leaf+stem)

So you might need to get 1 3rd ring if you don't get enough quests.
If they want them all to be the same it should be closer to 4 and 10 ie getting ALL the tech points barely gets you lvl 15

Quill did get a lot of quests in the stream and easily reached affinity 15 (I think even affinity 17 later on) without having a single ring 3 technology. Then there's also random affinity from ruins, which - if I remember correctly - he didn't get any in that particular let's play.

Overall... assuming the gameplay showed in Quills stream is representative of the release version of Rising Tide... IF there is any need to get ring 3 technologies, then it's only to reach the final affinity tech. No ring 3 tech will actually be useful for anything other than being required for a victory condition - or pure fun.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

So you might need to get 1 3rd ring if you don't get enough quests.
If they want them all to be the same it should be closer to 4 and 10 ie getting ALL the tech points barely gets you lvl 15

You have to research some high tier stuff anyway (at least as Harmony you have to get the Nano-stuff on the very left).

 

[GenEngineer]

@ Ryika, actually, by my count, he got affinity experience at least 2, and a free level up at least once - and I haven't even watched it all yet. So he was at least getting it from ruins, although he still got a lot quickly.

 

[Manannan]

Skipping around through quill's stream I'm increasingly concerned that a better player could absolutely smash the standard victory times from BE. I know it's quick speed on a lower difficulty, but he looks like he's just kinda aimlessly faffing about doing whatever. I suspect that with more optimal play we will see victory times well under 200 turns.

The war score mechanic seemed like a cool idea but it is completely broken at the moment. Let's hope they fix it quick.

Something to look forward to in 2016 with the release of Civ BE: Even Risier Tides.

Actually thinking about that being quite possible made me sad.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Quill did get a lot of quests in the stream and easily reached affinity 15 (I think even affinity 17 later on) without having a single ring 3 technology. Then there's also random affinity from ruins, which - if I remember correctly - he didn't get any in that particular let's play.

Overall... assuming the gameplay showed in Quills stream is representative of the release version of Rising Tide... IF there is any need to get ring 3 technologies, then it's only to reach the final affinity tech. No ring 3 tech will actually be useful for anything other than being required for a victory condition - or pure fun.

Well I see the big problems + solutions as

problem: Affinity level 15 all you need to get (because it ties into victory.. fortunately military is liberated from that with hybrid upgrades)

solution:They need to improve the benefits of techs so that you research the techs primarily for the techs and not for the affinity
-have the victories require more than get lvl 15, build wonder, wait...add more interaction (so you want the other benefits of the techs)
-have the techs give more 'other bonuses' in helping your empire survive that can properly scale


problem 2: Affinity level 15 to easy to get
(You should probably have to have all second ring affinity techs AND some of the 3rd ring AND quests/nontech affinity to get the Affinity victory).

solution2a: make getting affinity 15 harder, ie decrease the amount of affinity on techs, move more to quests and other techs.
solution 2b: raise the level (make it 18)

 

[Halbbruder]

Well I see the big problems + solutions as

problem: Affinity level 15 all you need to get (because it ties into victory.. fortunately military is liberated from that with hybrid upgrades)

solution:They need to improve the benefits of techs so that you research the techs primarily for the techs and not for the affinity
-have the victories require more than get lvl 15, build wonder, wait...add more interaction (so you want the other benefits of the techs)
-have the techs give more 'other bonuses' in helping your empire survive that can properly scale


problem 2: Affinity level 15 to easy to get
(You should probably have to have all second ring affinity techs AND some of the 3rd ring AND quests/nontech affinity to get the Affinity victory).

solution2a: make getting affinity 15 harder, ie decrease the amount of affinity on techs, move more to quests and other techs.
solution 2b: raise the level (make it 18)

Agreed.

While RT has made it easier to level up affinity from quests, they need to reduce affinity xp from techs even further, otherwise it would be possible to complete games earlier more often. Reworking AI difficulty across all types would also be ideal here as well.

 

[Natura]

Ultrasonic Fence seems purely useful just to pop the Trade Unit quest now. "Discourages" aliens seems to do little to nothing, giving players little incentive not to just blast aliens to shreds that enter their territory.

 

[Halbbruder]

Ultrasonic Fence seems purely useful just to pop the Trade Unit quest now. "Discourages" aliens seems to do little to nothing, giving players little incentive not to just blast aliens to shreds that enter their territory.

Still, it's a must-have for any sea trade route. The change is designed so that the aliens can still bother you after you've built it.

 

[Gali]

Keep in mind that there was an alien nest within 3 tiles of Quill's city. The need to defend the nest overrode the fence. Once he built it the other areas of his city were safe. And he does rile the aliens in search of artifacts.So the fence is still useful but I will switch from always taking 1 extra range to keeping trade safe.

Seeing the buildings you get from artfiacts I will be cashing in earth artifacts quickly. Both are hardly great and for warmongers.

 

[BevHeartMuncher]

Right at the end of Quill's 4th video, it mentions that his colony can 'only support 20 units' and because he had 21, production costs increased.

What? I've never heard of this. Is it in base BE? I imagine it goes up as you get bigger, and I tend to only build smaller, effective armies in the late game but 20-unit limit? Might have been introduced to slow down early-game leash spam.

 

[Natura]

Right at the end of Quill's 4th video, it mentions that his colony can 'only support 20 units' and because he had 21, production costs increased.

What? I've never heard of this. Is it in base BE? I imagine it goes up as you get bigger, and I tend to only build smaller, effective armies in the late game but 20-unit limit? Might have been introduced to slow down early-game leash spam.

That's a thing in Civ V, where once you pass the number of units your civ can support, all production drops by 10%, then further in increments of 10% for each unit you're over the cap. They may have ported it over to BE, or it might be in there already; given that wide play is so optimal in BE, it might just be rare for players to see it.

 

[Westwall]

Just saw topic on reddit about War Score... this is potentially game-breaking if the devs haven't noticed and corrected it yet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/civbeyondearth/comments/3n1bkw/war_score_is_way_too_arbitrary_and_will/

I'm watching Quill's LP, he reduced the NSA to one city and tried to go for peace. He would get a city out of the peace deal, which off course NSA can't accept because is their last city, so the AI just don't accept peace. There's no option to give up getting the city in the peace deal, so you can just make peace and get nothing in return, so Quill's only option is to destroy the NSA once and for all or stay at war into something change. He takes NSA last city, then he attack PAC and run into the same issue.

 

[GenEngineer]

Just saw topic on reddit about War Score... this is potentially game-breaking if the devs haven't noticed and corrected it yet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/civbeyondearth/comments/3n1bkw/war_score_is_way_too_arbitrary_and_will/

That's nothing. Later on he declares war on PAC, and their unwilling to give up even a non-capital, and you can't offer white peace.

The War Score mechanic could have been a really cool mechanic, but every time we've seen it in a stream it comes across as a badly broken system.

 

[Natura]

Just saw topic on reddit about War Score... this is potentially game-breaking if the devs haven't noticed and corrected it yet.

https://www.reddit.com/r/civbeyondearth/comments/3n1bkw/war_score_is_way_too_arbitrary_and_will/

I'm just waiting for the devs to say that it's working as intended, since a sponsor reduced to their last city will decide they'd rather go down fighting than surrender.

More and more signs point to RT being rushed out the door. When will publishers learn.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The War Score mechanic could have been a really cool mechanic, but every time we've seen it in a stream it comes across as a badly broken system.

Yep. I think the player should get different options from white peace up to the maximum peace term allowed by war score. That way the player could be generous and offer a white peace even when he is winning and this should give the player back some respect with the AI. It would also fix the bug. I also think there needs to be more variations in the peace terms. It seems now that there are basically only 3, you either get nothing from peace or you win/lose a city or win/lose 2 cities. There needs options like pay 100 energy, pay 300 energy etc.