Spring Patch notes

I'm in the middle of a game with Peter on Immortal difficulty. Luckily enough I started with Khmer and India as neighbors, not the most aggressive. I managed to found Vodkaism to get some bonuses. Khmer attacked and nearly wiped me. I exploited an Emergency against India that had converted Vodkaism's holy city, had to censure their religion from my city. It was easy enough and got me like 9000 gold, which I used to counter attack Khmer and annex the most part of his empire. Built a few Wonders, incl. Basil's Catherdral which sprung me up on the score ladder. I've been rollercoasting between normal, golden and dark ages, and just got a Heroic one, just in time to counter Jadwiga attacking from the north. Even if technologically late my Cossacks are pretty badass, being inflated with lots of experience earned from the Dark Age policy card which gives +100% combat xp. I'm preparing to use my Golden Age Casus Belli to cripple Ghandi and get closer to Poland. Meanwhile I am second in culture and tourism (only behind Poland), piling up great works and, I hope, more relics.

All in all it's a nice game, I don't think I can catch up on science (I'm in mid-Industrial) but I'll try to hurt Poland and steal her great work and wonders towards cultural victory.

 

Following up on my original observation, the occasional slowness of turns seems to be caused by the game hanging for 2-3 seconds on actions which consume units (founding cities, killing units, etc). When you have a lot of AI players it is definitely noticeable.

 

I found that clearing out the log files before resuming a game speeds it up.
Maybe I only imagine it, and/or I've incorrectly assumed that maintaining the
large AI-related .csv files is a possible cause.

 

Not sure if anyone has already mentioned it but so far renewing friendships/alliances goes a lot smoother than before the patch. No more one turn rejections in between.

 

But the important question is... now that the Spring/Summer/Early Fall Patch has finally dropped... is there a new testing Depot on Steam for any DLC?

 

Activity around the mac version and some minor tweaks to the steam page but no DLC changes as far as I can tell.

 

It looks like Gitarja got a bit too obsessed with forward settling after the patch. Could it be some mistake in her code? She's supposed to go for small islands, not try to stick a city on every landmass which I'm currently observing

 

I have noticed this on two separate games that included her.

Other observations I have noticed:

1. Zulu and Scythia focus on religion too much. Two very powerful civs, yet they drop holy districts non stop and then fall behind big time early-mid way into the game. I hate seeing the AI play them so badly considering how strong they are if played properly to their actual strengths. These are undisputed T1 Civs! They are not scary at all being their neighbors! Now they are hardly better than Spain. Still better than Scythia going bankrupt for stockpiling too many horses mid game with few wars declared like in previous patches. Zulu like in last patch has pathetic armies and troop counts.

2. Sumeria for whatever reason(s) seems to spam wonders now. Well more than what I used to see at least. He is still strong Domination wise at the same time in some games, which is puzzling, considering how much else he builds.

3. The AI is too friendly again in certain games. Sometimes it can be heavy war between a few bad apples (the catty agenda types like Germany), but largely the AI is a bit too chummy. Some of the players here have been wanting that. I think it is good overall, but it is immersion and character breaking for a civ like Zulu, Mongolia, or Scythia to be war-less the entire game.

4. The starting distances for King and lower vs Emperor/Immortal/Deity, really impact the game you can have. Certain (probably most) civs are too nice when there is plenty of room to settle. On the harder difficulties, the AI has almost no choice and you get attacked or have to attack due to being too close to each other. The pressure at the beginning of the game is immense now, not sure if that is a good thing.

5. Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Nubia, America, and Cree seem to play better AI wise. I am seeing consistent improvement with them. They expand alot in the handful of games I have running or completed. They can be aggressive and efficient. Persia, Spain, Khmer, and Malaysia, like Rosty says, like to forward settle too much.

I still need to run games with Kongo, Macedon, France, Brazil, Peru, Poland, Japan, Greece, and Australia. I want to see if their behaviors have changed any and how do they fair now. I also have started 1 non-barb game as well to see how that is going. I probably need a few more under the belt to see the changes there.

 

Might deserve a cross-post to Funny screenshots... What exactly was she (Gitarja) going to do with this city? I should've probably conquered and razed it while it was Free City... Do you get a warmonger penalty for razing a Free City, by the way? Or can you even do it?

Edit: before you start noticing minor details, it's a Marathon speed game with turn limit reduced to 1000 by me.

 

That's the AI's long term strategy for the Asmudsen research station.

 

Well, Gitarja can get stuff from the water, but you'd think at least to go build it up by the turtles or out by the point, near more resources. Unless if you desperately want both 3rd ring Copper tiles...

 

Something else that should give era score is liberating capitals and city states (though I haven't verified liberating a city state doesn't give any). I just liberated a capital for Egypt and got no era score. Though I should get era score for the emergency, not every liberation is part of an emergency and it seems like this should give era score.

 

Liberating city states can indirectly do so, related to suzerainty.

 

Sigh. Why am I penalized for taking part in emergencies to the point I can't renew my alliances? Ridiculous. Granted I did liberate an additional city state, but that liberation should not count as a city conquer. I have not conquered a single city this game, but I have liberated 1 city state 3 times, another city state once, and a Cleaopartra's capital once (she's the one who won't renew alliance).

I have 0 warmonger penalty.]

edit: Finally Cleopatra offers declaration of friendship after about 5 turns out of the alliance. What I usually do is offer a strategic resource for free as a gift that I don't care about. Not sure if this helps though.

 

I've had that sometimes, where a longtime friend decides they don't want to stay allied for a few turns, then changes their minds afterwards. Not sure why.

 

Modifers are 'per turn' modifiers of an overall score. You are a bit dancing on the treshold. Losing friendship set you score a bit back but then your positive modifier kicked in the following turns putting you above the threshold. Or it could be that the treshold ofr accepting a friendship declaration by the AI is a bit higher than the one to propose a declaration of friendship. Pure guess here.

 

It's happened enough to me that I don't think the visible modifiers are the cause most of the time. There's something else under the hood.

 

I've all but confirmed invisible modifiers in this game. But because they are invisible, I can't 100% confirm them. .

The 2 that stand out are the one I mentioned above declaring war as part of emergency or even any declaration of war the negative reputation sticks around long after the warmongering modifier wears off.

The other is when you are close to winning a game it's very difficult to renew friendships/alliances. That "you are winning the game" modifier still seems to be there in invisible form.

It's fairly easy to keep friends and allies if you never ever declare war. But what fun is that? I find if I do early expansion it usually takes me like 3 ages before I can get an alliance, long after the warmongering modifiers wear off.

 

The problem is often that, even if you NEVER declare war, someone will DOW you at one time or another, and if you defend yourself and take cities, the penalty will be exactly the same. This is stupid IMHO... if someone DOWs me and I beat the crap out of him/her, well so be it, you got what you deserved !!!

anyways... still love this game... didn't even finish my first game of GALCIV3 and I came back to CIV6...just much more fun to play

 

Your Honour, why am I the bad guy? Yeah, I stole his house, but he punched me first. Once someone does something bad to me, I can do anything I want to them, can't I?