Some random obervations from the streams

[Sansa_Stark]

Overall the game looks great, and in much better shape than CiV at launch. And I really look forward to dive into it. However there are some stuff that need to be looked into ASAP.


- The AI moves units better than CiV, but it doesn't build enough. In fact many city states seem to have better armies than most AI opponents.

- Both the AI opponent and city states don't upgrade units, so it has a bunch of warriors and slingers/archers after +120 turns.

- Teching seems incredibly fast. My initial concern of 50 % being to big of a eureka bonus is confirmed, I've watched Quill's stream now, and he gets a whole bunch of them without even trying. I do think tech cost must be raised, and the percentage of eureka boost be lowered. Some of the boosts should have more difficult requirements, you shouldn't be able to get that many out of sheer coincidence.

- The AI makes some strange trade offers. Like 2 for 2 luxery resources in addition to GIVING 11gpt.

- Goody huts are kinda hard to spot, but even worse are the pillaged resource tiles (especially sea resources). I almost went mad from seeing the pillaged fishing boats sitting there forever in one of the streams.

- Goverment legacy bonuses should be capped at some point, no? Especially when you consider the America unique ability.

- I understand Kongo want you to spread your religion, but it's kinda immersion breaking when he criticize you for not doing so when you do not have a religion yourself.

- Seem to be very easy to spam cities, I do not think escalating cost of settlers/builders/districts is quite enough at this level, especially when the AI is passive and don't build any army at all.

- The dead sea should not give fresh water

- When you capture a city, the district count is all wrong on the Raze/keep-screen.

- The exploit level for capturing settlers to remain settlers is just too high IMHO.



Anything else that hopefully will be fixed in three weeks?

Disagree with couple of things:

- Problem with upgrades might be gold, Marb actually had enough gold to improve his units himself only because AI was offering him sick peace deals (giving him a ton of money). Most of the game all his positive income was from deals.
- I didn't watch Quill, but I find it weird. Marb was again tons of weird stuff just to get Eurekas. It definitely didn't seem that he could get that much by coincidence.
- What's the deal with legacy bonuses? Marb never got over 5% in anything. They seem really marginal to me (which is ok).
- You're the first one to complain about slow escalation of settlers/builders/districts cost I guess However, it seemed well balanced to me. Builders were scaled really slowly, settlers little bit more, and districts seem to take reasonable time in good production cities. In new/small cities they take a lot of time, but that's kind of a point I guess. And you can always speed it up by trade routes/chopping.
- Don't get that goody hut issue. I can see it all the time, and it has sound associated with it. Both you and me are apparently shouting on people for not taking them, so if we can see it, they can to. Maybe some people just need to get used on things. Honestly, all these youtubers are pretty bad in details (which is perfectly fine, since they don't want to be boring).

Real issues are imo capturing settlers, deals offered by AI which are sometimes totally off, and AI not building army.

 

[Jabulani]

From the look of Haggbart's post he didn't play a pre-release version of the game, but makes observations based on how others played.

Just like 99,9% of who post here. That does not prevent to perform an excellent beta testing job because numbers are numbers.

I could be happy or dislike with lot of detailed reports about the man on the moon or the Large Hadron Collider output results even if I am not actively working on it, I could perfectly judge a movie's actor even if I have never acted in a movie for real, salary details numbers included.

 

[elitetroops]

Marbozir said that eurkas are not ment to be hard to get. Many of them can mess up your build order, basically trading production for science. Given that you can withhold your great people and use them at a time then you have techs you are not going to get the eurka for can be amazing.

Especially in the early game Marbozir mainly loses Eurekas due to poor planning and not thinking through the decisions properly. For example, there's a point where he has the Inspiration for Military Tradition but not for State Workforce or Early Empire. He doesn't want to go for Military Tradition because he wants to beeline Political Philosophy, so he goes for Early Empire instead thinking he might be able to grow capital to pop 6 before it completes. However, he doesn't at that point consider the fact that he is about to finish a settler to lose a pop, and the city is about to become unhappy to slow down growth. 15 turns later, he finishes a Holy Site to get the Eureka for State Workforce and is 2 turns away from completing Early Empire without the Eureka. Had he instead went MT->SF, he would have completed both of those by then and could start on Early Empire and grow cap to pop 6 in time for Eureka. Not only would he had been faster to Political Philosophy, but he would have picked up Military Tradition along the way as well. This is what I meant by them being too powerful. Beelining doesn't help if you pay double for the techs. Better to pick up other stuff in between while completing Eurekas.

However, looking at some later stage gameplays I can see that there will be some tougher decisions. Stuff like building 2 Banks require a lot of investment and won't necessarily be worth it, even if you could. And there will be a trade off between expansion and picking up Eurekas. Aggressive early REX will definitely have you miss several of them. You will also need a lot of balancing. Hard to tell yet how it will work out in a more carefully planned game, since all youtubers I've seen so far make decisions very quickly and don't seem to plan ahead as much as I like to do.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Religious units can not be attacked by military units.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Religious units can not be attacked by military units.

So Religious units block enemy military units and can't be destroyed?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

They can be killed by religious units but not by military units. Great people can not be killed by military units or atleast not the civilian great people.

 

[GeoModder]

Just like 99,9% of who post here. That does not prevent to perform an excellent beta testing job because numbers are numbers.

Looks like we have widely different ideas on what beta testing actually is.

 

[Jabulani]

Looks like we have widely different ideas on what beta testing actually is.

Yes we have different ideas because you have much probably been a real betatester just I was in the past, but you can't restrict the feedbacks value to the ones who have the game in hands otherwise imo you wuold miss thousands bugs which players report on a daily basis in this forum f.i.

Firaxians are allowing the videos not only for marketing advs but also for feedbacks purposes. ( aka as free betatesting masquerated by fans comments )

 

[Zanteogo]

Maybe they could tune down the Eurekas to 33% instead of 50%. Now the Eureka system looks too strong.

or... make them harder to get so your don't just collect most of them without any effort?

Even better, have the % depend on how difficult it is to get them.

Also, because they are a percentage, they are MUCH more powerful late game when the techs cost more.

 

[Siptah]

As seen in Marbozir's LP, the AI does declare Joint Wars. So I see at least some hope for Gilgamesh's ULA not being completely useless when played by the AI.

Edit: And barbarians seem to be a thing for quite a while, they don't suddenly disappear in the Middle Ages. Also good for Sumeria. However, in some LPs, they are far more dangerous and plentiful as in others as it seems.

 

[elitetroops]

Edit: And barbarians seem to be a thing for quite a while, they don't suddenly disappear in the Middle Ages. Also good for Sumeria. However, in some LPs, they are far more dangerous and plentiful as in others as it seems.

In Quill's LP barbarian camps are popping up every few turns in the uncontrolled arctic all the time, even when he is researching Future Techs. Sumeria will get silly amount of artifacts, as long as they have slots to store them.

 

[Evs]

Maybe some of these concerns will be better if we could see game play with higher difficulties. Most Youtube streams start with explaining that they don´t have much experience with previous games... I guess the AI on higher difficulties would give a better picture. I mean prince is for beginners and the AI should be pushovers.

Same goes for the fast research. I bet most streams have both selected fast game play and easy mode difficulty. I wonder what the research speed at normal speed with higher difficulty feels like? I for one felt like the research of Civ V was a bit to fast. Now we get less techs in each tech tree compared to Civ V and the Eureka bost. So I sincerely hope we can separate options for setting the research and production speeds. Since the old Epic speed with slow production just meant slow game not epic as in time to build more stuff, wage wars, etc.

Prince has always been "medium" or "average" or "normal" difficulty. It has never been beginner. If it is for beginners then what's the point of any lower difficulties ?
The slower tech speed on slower game settings won't change the fact that tech is too fast and eureka boosts are OP since everything will scale with slower speed not just the tech speed. If tech is too fast on standard speed it will be equally too fast on marathon speed. If the tech speed is too fast then the base cost needs increasing for tech, not just to increase the game speed.

 

[beorn]

It seems to me that eurekas are working poorly because it's the wrong way around.

If it takes X amount of effort for a civ to develop sailing, that really assumes they have citizens staring out at the water, trying to work the problem out. It's not that it should take X/2 to work out the problem if they live by the water, it's that it should take at least 2X if they don't live by the water.

I suppose it comes across as more fun to think of a eureka as being a bonus, but I think it should really be more like an opportunity. The door is pretty much closed to making a discovery, unless you have certain conditions that make it likely your smart people are thinking on a problem. (Although meeting up with neighbors who already have an advance might also present the opportunity.)

 

[Evs]

They can be killed by religious units but not by military units. Great people can not be killed by military units or atleast not the civilian great people.

So you can surround your city with religious units and the base in indestructible by any military attack ?

 

[Jaybe]

So you can surround your city with religious units and the base in indestructible by any military attack ?

It's been said that military units CAN kill religious units. I presume you have to be at war with them.

 

[Zanteogo]

So you can surround your city with religious units and the base in indestructible by any military attack ?

You can do this to stop other religious units from converting however.

 

[Danzo_87]

Military units can kill religious units, in fact it will lower the religions strength of nearby city

 

[daft]

We also don't know how things scale with slower setting. I guess most better players prefer epic or marathon. If eurekas are weaker on them (because they get scaled down out of proportion) I don't se the problem. It might also be much harder to get the increased science on marathon if the yields don't scale the same way as does the cost. Maybe standard is more for casual players.
Doesn't make much sense, but is a possibility.

Hope you're right, epic/marathon is the only way to play a civ game (according to myself). Hope the game is well balanced when playing Epic worlds, otherwise, gonna be a problem sticking to the game and not doing something more worthwhile instead....

 

[daft]

Military units can kill religious units, in fact it will lower the religions strength of nearby city

Unfortunate, but realistic, taking into account real history.

 

[Stilgar08]

It is always amazing to me how thoroughly this community is at raising concerns without playing a single minute themselves. I wonder how many of you actually played the pre - version (please raise your hand).

There are a few issues, I agree. But even professional journalists didn't raise their voice stating how bad AI or balance is. I didn't even hear a lot of complaining from youtubers either. None, now that I think of it... If you have please provide proof or examples.
It's a prebuild with only 10civs, prince solely (prince being level 4 out of 8 according to gamestar) and quick and standard speed. This to me feels like a build already a few weeks old, don't you think?
If a feature or a mechanic is OP they might have the time to correct it.
Writing Bull is a slow player and on standard speed the feel of techspeed looks alright to me. I'm playing epic later, that's for sure...
Unguarded settlers is a problem but solvable IMO. I may be disappointed on Oct. 21st, and moan right here, but I'll preserve my verdict for the time after I played myself.
But I doubt it ;p