Some random obervations from the streams

[Haggbart]

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?

 

[qadams]

One thing I've seen in recent gameplays is that barbarians have no apparent desire to attack builders or traders. They simply ignore them. Weird.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The number one thing seems to be that conquest are really powerful as each city you conquer make you stronger and with a unique unit such as legionary it is pretty cheap and easy to do. I guess even if the ai was building units more aggressively it is not easy to counter legionaries.

Given that a single city, even in the early game may be an investment of 500-1000 production, legionaries who cost 110 production per unit is an amazing investment as 5-10 of these can conquer an empire.

Cities even with walls seems to be weak and easy to capture with the same tech as the walls.

 

[elitetroops]

- 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.

I completely agree with this. Eurekas seem broken. They don't really provide any interesting choices, because they are so easy to get and provide such a powerful bonus. If you plan well, there will be very few situations when you should even consider teching stuff without the boost. I know people keep saying that it's hard to get some of them, but it doesn't seem like that at all to me.

The other thing with Eureka boosts is that since they are so easy to get, Great People providing random boosts are very weak. Boosts from goody huts will also often give you effectively nothing. I would prefer if Eureka boosts gave you 30% of the tech and Great People/Goody Huts would give you 30% that would stack with the original boost if you get both (maybe 50% for GS). And they should be harder to get.

Oh, and capturing settlers is indeed absolutely ridiculous. That will be exploited so hard, no matter if the AI learns to send them out with escorts or not.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

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.

Tech do not look to be all that powerful either, better units are good but they are also expensive and so are the wonders and buildings.

 

[kaspergm]

I completely agree with this. Eurekas seem broken. They don't really provide any interesting choices, because they are so easy to get and provide such a powerful bonus. If you plan well, there will be very few situations when you should even consider teching stuff without the boost. I know people keep saying that it's hard to get some of them, but it doesn't seem like that at all to me.

The other thing with Eureka boosts is that since they are so easy to get, Great People providing random boosts are very weak. Boosts from goody huts will also often give you effectively nothing. I would prefer if Eureka boosts gave you 30% of the tech and Great People/Goody Huts would give you 30% that would stack with the original boost if you get both (maybe 50% for GS). And they should be harder to get.

I agree 100 %. I think my favorite offenders along this line are the eurekas/civics that requires you research a certain tech/civic to get the eureka/inspiration for another tech/civic. I mean, really?

 

[TheRaven476]

Everything is on Prince difficulty........ (AKA Easy mode for people that really know how to play Civ).

I can see many of those things being teaks built into the difficulty settings. The big one being how AI offers deals. I don't see them offering those same deals on higher difficulties. I'm also not sure if tech gets more expensive as the difficulties go up.

At least that's my hope anyways. I never beat Civ on Diety difficulty, but Beyond Earth I beat on the highest difficulty with incredible ease. I really really really hope that the game retains Civ 1-5 decent difficulty settings and doesn't get infected by Beyond Earth being jokingly easy even at the highest difficulties.

 

[Siptah]

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.

 

[Gamling80]

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.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Whoa, that new forum smell.

I saw on Filthy Robot's Livestream that you can ransom captured spies back to their masters, Bridge of Spies style. Pretty cool.

Also, there's a nice replay and a comprehensive set of graphs after the game ends.

 

[stealth_nsk]

One thing I've seen in recent gameplays is that barbarians have no apparent desire to attack builders or traders. They simply ignore them. Weird.

Only Scouts. Normal barbarian units capture builders and traders a lot. Marbozir lost 1 Builder twice and 2-3 Traders already.

 

[phryxolydian]

Barbarian Horsemen were a thing before turn 20 or something on Filthy's LPs. That's going to be fun...

Maybe.

 

[qadams]

Only Scouts. Normal barbarian units capture builders and traders a lot. Marbozir lost 1 Builder twice and 2-3 Traders already.

Hm, I wonder if it will stay that way. Seems like barb scouts should want to capture unescorted builders or settlers, doesn't it?

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

Overall thoughts about the pre-release: Gorgeous but dumb.

* The AI doesn't really 'understand' the game, so there's no sense of playing against someone, and all those nifty new game mechanics are wasted. You're really playing a mild puzzle game of optimizing cities in the face of barbarian spam. Higher levels of AI will have bonuses and will therefore increase the spam, but there will still be no sense of playing against an opponent. Strategy? Do some early development, take sufficient lebensraum from the AI, then play solitaire. (With the exception of having to counter AI religion spam; that's the one thing the AI can do.)

* The map is very pretty! But some of the graphics fade into the background. Tribal villages are the most obvious: Player after player had difficulty noticing them.

* As always, early UUs are extremely good. Though obviously unnecessary against the AI.

* UIs do not seem so great, especially early ones. The best hexes tend to have resources, and most cities have quite a few of these, which is a good thing imo, but which also means that getting other improvements online is a secondary consideration.

* Greece and Germany's extra government slot seems very nice, as does Rome's free monument. Norway's early access to the sea can be really good! In general, early abilities are great.

* I liked Eurekas and Inspirations. Because they are powerful, I noticed that players had an extra decision to make when choosing techs and civics, a good thing. But I'm not sure the overall speed of development is quite tuned right.

As in real life, I lust after the eye candy but decide that it's not worth getting involved.

Expected but disappointed.

On the positive side, I don't need to think about getting a new computer for a while, at least until some new AI is written, and I have time to do more productive things. (As if .)

Anyway,

Ken

 

[Jabulani]

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?

IMO you should be paid for your betatesting and btw I agree with all of your precious and great statements.

10 euros per each bug seems to me appropriate, Ed Beach pls take note of this guy and all the other ones which are helping you in a professional way for free, just for their passion for Sid.

 

[GeoModder]

IMO you should be paid for your betatesting and btw I agree with all of your precious and great statements.

10 euros per each bug seems to me appropriate, Ed Beach pls take note of this guy and all the other ones which are helping you in a professional way for free, just for their passion for Sid.

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.

 

[Al Bundy]

Maybe I am just pessimistic but I don't expect many changes until Oct. 21, except bugfixes and stats rebalancing. The AI looks dead, at least in Prince. It doesn't even search for Tribal Villages anymore. You can still find them near other Civ's capitals.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Hm, I wonder if it will stay that way. Seems like barb scouts should want to capture unescorted builders or settlers, doesn't it?

I don't think they "should", it's a game design decision. If barbs use scouts to actually scout, why not?

 

[cakes]

even though the eurekas aren't supposed to be hard to get, you're not really directed into playing a certain way. you can still hit plenty of eurekas without specialising your civ at all, but i thought the point was that your playstyle was being shaped by your environment and further still by your responses to your environment. those religion eurekas are impossible to miss basically as soon as you get a pantheon, but even earlier if you get a natural wonder. the rest just unlocks the further you move towards getting a religion naturally so it's almost like you can't help but get automatic boosts

they'll work it out though

 

[Al Bundy]

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