Spring Patch notes

I've only had trouble with saves when running mods (and not always then). I'd give about 90% of an unmodded game being fine.

 

So does this mean the Mapuche could flip a well developed city in a couple of turns with pillaging? I wonder how the math checks out on that.

There are 6 hexes immediately surrounding a city, so if you pillage all 6 directly adjacent you'd drop the Loyalty by 30. I think there are 12 tiles in the second ring. I forget how many in the third. I wonder if each building in a district counts towards this + district itself. If so, this ability is terrifying, because your most developed cities are the ones most vulnerable to it. Should be interesting.

 

There’s some good stuff in the patch, but very disappointed some stuff is not fixed.

England

I know Firaxis are reading these forums. The problems with England have been posted about exstensively. And yet England is still a mess, and moreso after the Spring patch.

Losing “extra” trade routes has made the RND mediocre (...at best...), and the loss of the extra trade routes and Pax B’s ability to produce troops on conquest has meant England has lost interesting strategies and real flavour. The ‘loyalty’ bonus to harbours (??) is bland, and doesn’t work anyway because the bonus comes too late to help England settle foreign continents (compare Spain’s Missions, which can be built instantly) and settling on continents isn’t worth the effort anyway.

Add all this to England’s existing problems - Sea Dog is awful, England’s +1 movement for Naval units gets lost if you upgrade a unit, and Naval combat isn’t strong anyway - and it means one of the most popular series Civs is just awful.

The most recent changes don’t “buff” England in any meaningful way, and totally miss the underlying problems. At this point, Enjgland needs to be completely reworked. There are plenty of suggestions: see my signature for example.

Pikes, Medieval Melee and Military Tactics

FXS have tried to improve anti-can and Uniqie Medieval Melee units: they’ve added Anti-Cav to Agoge and related policy cards, they‘ve added an extra Anti-Cav unit (Pile and Shot) and they’ve given Medieval Melee units a serious buff. These are good changes, but we’re not there yet.

First, Pikes are still just too damn expensive for the amount of punch they give. @Sostratus has explained the problem elsewhere. The last patch actually makes this problem worse, because the change to Commandos makes Melee even stronger (I mean, anti cav have to wait until tier 3 anti cav promotions to get +1 movement).

Second, no one wants to research Military Tactics: it’s a leaf tech with too little benefit. A radical solution would be to get rid of MT from the Tech Tree: make it a civic, and have Pikes and Medieval Melee unlock at Industrialisation or Castles. But a less radical solution would be to make MT more valuable: make researching MT or killing with a Pike a Eureka and or have MT unlock a more general buff like Military Traditon does.

Until Military Tactics gets reworked, Norway, Japan, Georgia and (to a different extent) Greece are made much less interesting or playable.

Cede cities

How it works now makes no sense. Either you should have only two options: return or cede; or if there is a third option (ie not ceding and not returning) then the captured city should become a free city.

 

Disappointed that they still don't care with Bandar Brunei's logo or Spear of Fionn indicator on the unit.

 

I like wonders, I like culture victories because I'm so very cultured myself.

I try and preserve most chopping for wonders and key districts/units. I'll use a few chops early to get a city started but I try to strategically string it out - especially if I've the Glory of the Harvest pantheon which I take more often than not now that faith can be a better currency than gold at times... I want to make sure that Magnus and I can grab the wonders most critical and that requires lots of Magnus city hopping and saving key resources for upcoming needs...

 

love the UU buffs and the immortal bugfix. i think ill play my first game as Norway and build mass amounts of berserkers. +1 movement from commando is huge as well. looks like a good patch to me.

Also have to try Mupache now. didnt interest me before but now have even more ince tive to raid and chip away without all out conquest

 

I really don't understand the lack of any real attempt to balance more civs.

Mapuche got a slight boost that I think isn't receiving enough attention for how much of a boost it is. With the unit strength and experience boosts, using the raid card or oligarchy... you can plunder a civ into a dark age and only take a border city or two while making tons of gold, faith, science and culture from your plunders and also destroying their loyalty - send scouts and fast units way ahead to attack key districts and improvements! England received the only advertised and otherwise significant boost.

Korea received a much-needed nerf. I still worry they are too OP but the change ought to help. Pericles did only insofar as the AI plays him, which is decent I guess though Pericles was already one of the best culture victory civs (along with Mvemba) when the AI plays.

However, what about Georgia - a civ that seems to be universally seen as too weak. It's got some great ideas, but not implemented well - how about making their envoys actually convert cities to their religion automatically? Moving the faith bonus to an earlier level of walls and making them +4 or +5? And something to help them get an early religion? Norway also seems to be universally seen as one of the weakest, though many appear to find it fun suggesting a few changes could make them viable. Several other civs, mostly from vanilla, could use some slight tweaks to make them more competitive - and you would think that the developers would have picked up on these and that more of an attempt would be made to address them.

They are significant, likely not that difficult to implement and heavily desired by the fanbase it appears...

 

Agreed on this. I'm not as opposed to the issues with England, since I've kind of resigned to them not being an overly strong civ. Losing the movement on upgrade is stupid. And the other change I would love to see with them is to not have other civs keep the extra artifact slots when they capture a British city. I mean, I love finding England near me because I know that 100 turns later I can build a theatre district with extra artifact slots. I know I don't get the theming, and it doesn't directly impact their strength as a civ, but it's just a weird "bug" in the game.

I do think they need to get rid of all leaf techs. I think the best plan would be to move Military Tactics down more to be in line with Construction-Military Engineering, and you put a new tech up there that would take both Math and Shipbuilding as pre-req. Even if the Tech only has Huey Teocali in there, it's at least a bridge that makes it so you can't skip the whole era on the way to Cartography too.

And then yeah, figuring out something to do with ceding would be great. Heck, even if they actually just freaking described what impact it actually had whether to cede a city or not, that would be great, since they'd actually have to think about what it meant.

 

I couldn't agree more. There are a lot of Civs which I think are almost right, but just need a really small buff or tweak.

Top of my list are the Cree - give them a starting Warrior and their starting unique Scout. They are an exploring Civ that has a Scout which costs more, so currently they actually get their Scout out slower that other Civs. Nuts. Sure, you could make their Scout cheaper: but giving them a free Scout would be more unique and flavourful, and still not overpowered (at least at higher levels), because at the end of the day its still just a Scout.

After them, Spain. Spain would really benefit from just the smallest of buffs. Maybe +1 charge for Missionaries in addition to +1 charge for Inquisitors. I'm fine that Spain doesn't get any real bonus of getting a Religion - that's totally fine - but given they don't, and then are also a Civ focused on settling on other continents (which is hard work for limited return), I think they do just need a small extra leg up.

As I said above though, lots of Civs would actually be significantly buffed just be fixing Military Tactics and Anti-Cav units.

 

Spain will be quite a bit buffed by the patch... +3 loyalty for cities with their religion. When they conquer a city, it converts to their religion... means conquests are easier to keep.

 

@Craig_Sutter That is a really, really good point. That synergises very well with their extra charges for Inquisitors too.

 

It's not so hard to keep your expanding empire loyal. Just have a few missionaries or apostles at hand when you settle new cities (or use the religious belief that allows any new cities you found to automatically take your religion). And if you are expanding militarily, just bring a few inquisitors along with your army.

 

A more sensible way of fixing the Magnus chop would be the following:

1) Make the governor establishment speed scale with the game speed (I have 5 on Marathon, which doesn't divide by 3, so I assume it's the same on any speed);

2) Increase it 3-4 times, so you think twice before moving a governor

 

Fixing chopping is a delicate thing. It's too easy to nerf it so no one will use it (it spends worker charge and a resource, after all). Surely overflow bug needs to be fixed, though. And after this, chopping balance needs to be carefully considered.

 

The only way to use Samurai, etc is still to chop them in. Building them means you completely miss your window for attack.

Another problem with building them is they will start with zero promotions.

I also wish they had reduced the strength of Knights by 3, and greatly reduced the cost of Pikemen.

 

Happy birthday then!

 

Just buy them with faith. Japan has an easy time to get a decent amount of faith per turn and rush to tier 2 governments for the required building.

 

Also agree.

Patch looks great but I think these are key problems that should be easy to fix and would make a big difference!

At this point I'd argue England needs a total redesign, it's currently a jumbled mess of awkward fixes.

 

According to the Spring patch notes:

"Enforced that cities cannot be founded on tiles with districts. It was possible before with the relaxed minimum city distance present in island situations."

Is it true that the minimum city distance for cities on different landmasses are reduced or relaxed?