Summer 2017 Patch Notes Discussion

[Eagle Pursuit]

I noticed the AI offering to exchange great works of writing with me as long as I threw in some luxuries and gold. I get it with art or relics, any reason to do this with writing?

The patch notes mentioned that the AI will be more willing to part with Great Works in trade. I don't know why. I've rarely had issues procuring Great Works from the AI.

 

[DioAurion]

I'm playing on King difficulty with Quo's Combined Tweaks mod. Pre-summer update, I had been at war with Australia for 700 years and they refused to accept peace for anything less than me offering them 70 gold per turn and 1500 gold flat. I've taken two of their cities (due to my naval tech advantage), but considering I'm rocking a small number of pikemen and swordsman, any land beyond the reach of my frigate's bombardment is certain death against Australia's musketmen and knights.

According to the scoreboard I only have about a 400 military strength lead over them, primarily because of my larger empire and navy I'm guessing. But when I tried to make peace, they were ready to give me EVERYTHING. Luxuries, gold, great works, all their cities, and my captured spy. It feels completely broken. I'm in no position to be receiving a full capitulation trade deal for peace.

 

[spfun]

Played a game as Nubia, patch has introduced some bugs and oddities.

1) Got given 4 great works of writing for 1 luxury.
2) AI would ask for friendship turn 2 of meeting them. Friendly the entire game, but alliances were almost impossible, one friend AI wanted 500+ gold per turn.
3) No turn timer on Research Agreements now
4) Moving Antiquity's you have to now hit ESC button as it comes up with a "Are you sure?" prompt with yes/no options on it...

 

[Disgustipated]

For the record, while I did conquer 4 cities, the rest were settler built cities. I didn't seem to struggle too much in production of settlers. I haven't really noticed any major increase in cost. But I'm only playing a standard size map, so I only built so many settlers. I can see this being more a problem on large maps.

 

[Browd]

50 in prod seems like a lot to me early on on paper. Haven't tried it yet.

It isn't a 50 increase in production. It's a 50% increase in the cost increment for each additional settler (from increase factor of 20 per settler to 30).

 

[Disgustipated]

Has anyone managed to forge an alliance yet? I have yet to do it.

New bug: I have all mods disabled this time, so it seems like a legit bug. Sometimes in between turns the AI offers me a deal, but the accept deal button is not available. I have to click on make this deal more equitable before I can accept. Presumably any deal the AI is offering me they should already be happy with. Doesn't happen every time though, only 2 or 3 times so far.

 

[sonicmyst]

Has anyone managed to forge an alliance yet?

Alliance is still possible but very costly. I have a screenshot somewhere...

 

[EpicWestern]

Keep in mind archers were nerfed which is a pretty huge disincentive for early war. Also as Browd mentioned, since its the cost increment and not the actual cost, it won't matter for your first settler.

I still think war is still overpowered though. They really needed to make a huge change to trades resulting from peace deals. I think it may even be worse now.

 

[EpicWestern]

New bug: I have all mods disabled this time, so it seems like a legit bug. Sometimes in between turns the AI offers me a deal, but the accept deal button is not available. I have to click on make this deal more equitable before I can accept. Presumably any deal the AI is offering me they should already be happy with. Doesn't happen every time though, only 2 or 3 times so far.

Yeah I've had that.

 

[Disgustipated]

tech/civics not popping up is back today as well. Kind of annoying because it's easy to forget to change civics policies or utilize a new tech you get.

I'm still not upgrading my walls, been defending with units so far. I still think building units may be more cost effective than upgrading walls.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

conquering 25 cities across the globe and keeping them together and productive for a few thousand years to attain a year 900 CE space victory isn't pretend to you? capturing every capital ever isn't pretend to you? neutering culture production in every other civ to attain a super early, 17 foreign tourists "culture" victory isn't pretend?

the whole game is pretend, so maybe you shouldn't be so dismissive of those who prefer an unrealistic peaceful victory over those who prefer an unrealistic domination victory. your "pretend" comment seems more of a political statement than anything related to the game of civ.

to say civ mechanics "dictate" military dominance is quite the exaggeration, as i don't think i've ever personally won a domination victory in the 24 years (on and off) since i first played civ even though i have won countless games. if military dominance was dictated as you say, i would have only won a fraction of those. i've done my share of 'conquering my continent' or wiping out the nearest 3 or 4 civs or whatever, it's frankly imo a boring and OP way of playing. it's quite baffling that so many people consider this the "good" way to play. i'd say it is more likely the game was designed (at higher difficulties) for early wars of conquest aimed at player's nearest one or two civs, and later on a few wars of defense and maybe one or two wars of expansion. any more than this and the rest of the game's balance breaks, and victory becomes a thoughtless steamroll. it's highly unlikely the developers meant for most of their game to be irrelevant, which is what happens with unchecked global military dominance.

If your opposition beats you militarily, you do none of those things. On the flip side, if you beat others militarily, they're not winning. You are, and you take your pick as which VC is technically attained.

That has been the reality in every single patch of every single civ game for more than two decades. You can win other ways, and since the AI is designed to throw sometimes winning other ways is easier, but in the mechanical sense and in terms of cost/tradeoff civ is and has always been military-first.

What the devs intended in any one iteration of civ is irrelevant to this consideration, because what they intended does not change what was ultimately implemented. That the game's outcome is frequently decided long before the game says so is one of civ's longstanding, glaring problems and a routine issue to address in 4x.

Regardless, it's not realistic to make a case that military isn't front-seat by design (accidentally or not) when you compare the costs of something like building a ship (and defending meanwhile while sinking those hammers!) to something like nuking the cities attempting it...which by the way also costs fewer beakers in addition to fewer hammers. If you're winning space in civ 6 (or any civ), you're either so far out in front that you can dump thousands of hammers into crap that can't fight and still hold up militarily or your opponents are throwing.

If you want to make a case that the micro to win militarily is boring, you're not wrong. I'd even argue that compared to games with competent or at least beta-level UI, you're objectively correct. It involves hundreds to thousands of inputs (many strictly not necessary under a better UI) during a phase of the game where the outcome isn't in doubt, and any single one of those move choices is close enough to irrelevant to the outcome that it isn't interesting. Civ 6 exacerbates this by making no credible effort to streamline the process, actively regressing in an objective #inputs fashion from previous entries in the series, which themselves are below par for turn-based strategy.

But that doesn't change the reality that military dominance is king in this game, even if you use it to win in some other fashion. That's how the costs are tuned. When I mentioned "playing pretend", my intention was to indicate that this has always been the reality in civ and that to say civ 6 introduced it somehow is playing pretend...not that the victory conditions themselves are. Obviously the game isn't realistic, nor should it be.

 

[Disgustipated]

Antiquity sites are no longer showing up as "new" resources when discovering Natural History. Only 1 icon showed up, despite me having multiple antiquity sites. It's kind of funny how they managed to introduce new bugs while fixing old ones.

Speaking of the warfare discussion above, the downside of war is the massive number of antiquity sites that pop up. I also have barbarians off, had I not did some much warring, I wouldn't have had so many antiquity sites pop up. Gonna have to build more archeological museums, even though I am not going for cultural victory. Getting to the point I won't discover Natural history until all my tiles are improved. I was close to being finished improving, but not quite. Now I can't build mines around my industrial zone going up.

Edit: Okay, after I right right clicked the antiquity site popup in the lower right, the icon for 12 more antiquity sites came up. So it works properly, kind of.

 

[Browd]

It's kind of funny how they managed to introduce new bugs while fixing old ones.

Remember this little truism:

 

[bbbt]

I'm playing on King difficulty with Quo's Combined Tweaks mod. Pre-summer update, I had been at war with Australia for 700 years and they refused to accept peace for anything less than me offering them 70 gold per turn and 1500 gold flat. I've taken two of their cities (due to my naval tech advantage), but considering I'm rocking a small number of pikemen and swordsman, any land beyond the reach of my frigate's bombardment is certain death against Australia's musketmen and knights.

According to the scoreboard I only have about a 400 military strength lead over them, primarily because of my larger empire and navy I'm guessing. But when I tried to make peace, they were ready to give me EVERYTHING. Luxuries, gold, great works, all their cities, and my captured spy. It feels completely broken. I'm in no position to be receiving a full capitulation trade deal for peace.

That's been an issue since day one. I wonder if war weariness is a large part of it - i.e. they are getting a lot of unhappiness from war weariness due to the losses, and that makes them overly eager to end it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's been an issue since day one. I wonder if war weariness is a large part of it - i.e. they are getting a lot of unhappiness from war weariness due to the losses, and that makes them overly eager to end it.

If only we could know the gameplay rules surrounding WW...where might a player find that in the game?

 

[bbbt]

If only we could know the gameplay rules surrounding WW...where might a player find that in the game?

I've only seen info of it on this forum unfortunately. I thought there was someone who also did some experimenting of AI behavior with war weariness turned off as well, but don't think that included surrender trades.

Edit: there's info on it in the formula thread: /threads/formula-thread.600534/ but I can't find the thread I'm remembering about the AI tests.

 

[Disgustipated]

Another new bug possibly. Anyone have this bug? I'm getting legacy bonuses from Theocracy despite never running theocracy. I've only ran 2 governments all game, classical republic and monarchy. I just switched to Democracy and noticed my weird legacy bonus from theocracy (which I never run). I really want my classical republic legacy bonuses

edit: And now I switched I'm only get 3% bonus influence points from Monarchy when I'm sure it was supposed to be 11%.

 

[Katakanja]

Another new bug possibly. Anyone have this bug? I'm getting legacy bonuses from Theocracy despite never running theocracy. I've only ran 2 governments all game, classical republic and monarchy. I just switched to Democracy and noticed my weird legacy bonus from theocracy (which I never run). I really want my classical republic legacy bonuses

I've seen this, I had the basic monarchy bonus prior to even researching the relevant civic to unlock it, though I believe I was getting the correct bonus for whatever gov I was running at the time as well. The monarchy bonus just appeared randomly - it took me a while to notice so I can't really contribute to potential causes.

 

[DioAurion]

That's been an issue since day one. I wonder if war weariness is a large part of it - i.e. they are getting a lot of unhappiness from war weariness due to the losses, and that makes them overly eager to end it.

"Our citizens are so unhappy from this war. Better give the enemy all our cities. Can't have war weariness if we don't have citizens to complain!"

 

[pgm123]

The patch notes mentioned that the AI will be more willing to part with Great Works in trade. I don't know why. I've rarely had issues procuring Great Works from the AI.

I'm the complete opposite. I had so much trouble getting Great Works in a trade that I assumed the AI couldn't part with it under any circumstances.