Summer 2017 Patch Notes Discussion

[Rosty K]

So we still can skip the Middle Ages?

 

[Wingednosering]

Trade Route chooser automatically selects previously completed trade route
Huzzah!!!!!

"Increased the discount for districts you have less of from 25% to 40%"
I guess I had better get back to working out exactly when the discount happens

" increased per settler cost bump by 50"
Bye bye peaceful builds, just encoutrages more war

Greece: Award an envoy whenever they complete an Acropolis.
Wowser, that makes a very powerful greece

Catherine’s Flying Squadron: now awards a free Spy when the extra capacity is earned at Castles. All spies start as Agents with a free promotion.
This is not to be underestimated, France is going to be a pain to play against
Especially as spies are reduced by 25%

This is a HUGE change.. massive benefits all over, wellk doine Firaxis! well worth the wait

Haven't seen you in a while Victoria.

Overall, amazing patch. All of the balance changes are welcome (except one) and nearly every change they made was really needed. I had no idea there was a discount for districts you had very few of.

As Victoria said, the settler change is the only bad one. They should be cheaper, not more expensive. It's getting harder and harder to play peacefully. Also not seeing any fixes for the tech/civic pacing or over-the-top district cost scaling. Those are the only three major complaints from me.

It would be nice if they expanded the 'civs will become more aggressive as you get closer to victory' to be 'civs will be more aggressive with runaways'. Hoping it works for AI vs AI as well.

Increasing the cost of archers is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Nubia just got even stronger (we already unanimously decried them as OP before the patch), but on the other, the archer rushes might be a bit tougher now (usually you just upgrade slingers though...not a big shift).

Greece might actually be worth playing now. The Acropolis went from 'worse than a standard Ampitheatre' to being perfectly on par with the other UDs.

 

[V. Soma]

To me it seems that some changes make war more likely an option - now... will the AI be really better at war with this patch?

 

[Corozivu]

Correct Alexander’s “To the World’s End” healing ability so it only triggers if the city has a COMPLETED wonder in it.
My inflated ego makes me think that they saw my bug report done here regarding this. I am going to miss the global insta heal this bug gave .
Also, restart button yey!

 

[PhilBowles]

Haven't seen you in a while Victoria.

Overall, amazing patch. All of the balance changes are welcome (except one) and nearly every change they made was really needed. I had no idea there was a discount for districts you had very few of.

As Victoria said, the settler change is the only bad one. They should be cheaper, not more expensive. It's getting harder and harder to play peacefully.

Is that a real concern? I haven't played for a long time, but in my experience the AI would declare war at the start of the game and, once defeated, would rarely if ever declare war again. The game should have an option to play peacefully in general, but it should never become Sim City where there is never any risk of war or where you can play solitaire without ever having to compete with the AI for resources. It's a longstanding problem in Civ as a series that the game is inherently non-interactive and rarely offers significant rewards for warfare past early game expansion unless you're actively pursuing domination. It's never been good at promoting 'realistic' situations in which actual map elements and resources are worth fighting over.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Is that a real concern? I haven't played for a long time, but in my experience the AI would declare war at the start of the game and, once defeated, would rarely if ever declare war again. The game should have an option to play peacefully in general, but it should never become Sim City where there is never any risk of war or where you can play solitaire without ever having to compete with the AI for resources. It's a longstanding problem in Civ as a series that the game is inherently non-interactive and rarely offers significant rewards for warfare past early game expansion unless you're actively pursuing domination. It's never been good at promoting 'realistic' situations in which actual map elements and resources are worth fighting over.

Wha what? Not really sure which version of Civ you have been playing, as I've never played 1 or 3 but warfare has always been the best way to go about things regardless of your victory type.

 

[Photi]

Well that and the AI becoming more aggressive when you are about to win could cause issues since it skews it once again to war.

I'd be worried even more about the later change, since that makes diplomacy even less appealing.

the later change was probably to make the late game more interesting. depending on just how unfriendly civs become when you approach victory, might make diplomacy more appealing. if 3 neighbors DOW at once 20 turns before endgame and actually send troops, and start pillaging distircts, late game could become very interesting. if you have alliances with your 3 neighbors however, that likely won't happen.

 

[Wingednosering]

Improve ability to utilize city-states, beyond just suzerainty

Anybody know what this actually means?

Is that a real concern? I haven't played for a long time, but in my experience the AI would declare war at the start of the game and, once defeated, would rarely if ever declare war again. The game should have an option to play peacefully in general, but it should never become Sim City where there is never any risk of war or where you can play solitaire without ever having to compete with the AI for resources. It's a longstanding problem in Civ as a series that the game is inherently non-interactive and rarely offers significant rewards for warfare past early game expansion unless you're actively pursuing domination. It's never been good at promoting 'realistic' situations in which actual map elements and resources are worth fighting over.

Yes, that is an issue. A lot of people like playing peaceful games and focusing on building themselves up rather than tearing the AI down. People do it for all kinds of reasons: some people do it as a handicap to the AI sucking at combat, some people do it because all war all the time gets boring, etc. CVs also require a lot of investment from the player. Peaceful play is (sometimes) the best way to go about those.

 

[Archon_Wing]

the later change was probably to make the late game more interesting. depending on just how unfriendly civs become when you approach victory, might make diplomacy more appealing. if 3 neighbors DOW at once 20 turns before endgame and actually send troops, and start pillaging distircts, late game could become very interesting. if you have alliances with your 3 neighbors however, that likely won't happen.

It'll depend on what manner was used. Whether it was Civ 2's OMG KILL DA HUMAN or a avid jealousy in 4 or 5 that would encourage them to mess you up.

 

[Disgustipated]

Anybody know what this actually means?

I'm guessing instead of dumping all their envoys into 1 city state to get suzerain, they may spread them out a bit to get the 1,3, and 6 bonuses. Which is what I often do.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I'm guessing instead of dumping all their envoys into 1 city state to get suzerain, they may spread them out a bit to get the 1,3, and 6 bonuses. Which is what I often do.

Darn, I just learned to do that too.

 

[Abraxis]

I prefer playing as a peaceful builder, but I don't think there is any inherent problem with war being significantly more rewarding than peace. What bugs me is that taking out an AI neighbour early is so easy, and it feels like it launches you so far ahead that everything after is meaningless; just a waiting game to the victory screen. There needs to be more uncertainty.

If I go into a game deciding "I'm going to take out my neighbour" -I'm going to do it. Nothing in the game will stop me, unless I don't have a neighbour. This does not take great skill or understanding of the game either, it's just a choice to commit, and it happens before the game even starts.
Another choice that happens before the game starts is the difficulty. So if I've already chosen what I want my relative starting resources to be, why would I upset that by taking more so soon. With no significant barrier in challenge or consequence, it just becomes a convoluted way of lowering your difficulty.

I suppose maybe their solution is to remove that choice by making early war necessary, which would explain the weird settler cost increase.

 

[WillowBrook]

I'm liking pretty much everything here except, as others have said, the settler cost increase. Maybe I'll want to pay attention to walls now, especially if going for a culture victory.

Don't know yet if my incomplete Pericles game (with a bunch of mods) will load, but I won't mind too much if it doesn't, as it will be fun to pay him again sometime with the Acropolis buff.

 

[manarod]

i like the changes but i don't understand the increased cost of district building. are them already not that usefull? like markets and libraries?

 

[PhilBowles]

Wha what? Not really sure which version of Civ you have been playing, as I've never played 1 or 3 but warfare has always been the best way to go about things regardless of your victory type.

War was only productive in Civ V because it was easy, as the AI was poor defensively, and from what I've played Civ VI is even worse in this regard thanks to the weakening of city defence and the AI's near-refusal to garrison with ranged units. The actual reward for taking territory wasn't important after the early game, since you need the time to build up the captured cities before they become useful. My point was that the actual direct reward from warfare was not valuable - strategic resources aren't useful in quantity save in Civ V, where they became obsolete sufficiently quickly that half the time by the time you captured the city you didn't need it. Tile outputs from other resources weren't worth the investment needed to take the cities either. If the AI could put up more of a fight it would be completely uneconomical. It was also a favoured way to play Civ V to play tall, so that you didn't really want further cities anyway.

It was more pronounced in Civ V than in earlier games, but those too had an 'expansion phase' where it was productive to go to war, and the mid- to late-game when the map was full and the only real reason to go to war was to up your score for domination or diplo victory. In those cases you still aren't caring unduly about fighting over the map or the actual output of the city - you're just grabbing cities for the population or score increase.

i like the changes but i don't understand the increased cost of district building. are them already not that usefull? like markets and libraries?

It's just an offset, because district costs have been reduced by the same proportion. So building a library, say, costs relatively the same amount, but you don't need to spend as much 'upfront' to get the district to put it in.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I'm also not thrilled with the settler cost increase. I think they are probably trying to encourage more tall play but it's just going to end up driving more aggressive early conquering and settler stealing early on (a mechanic they can get rid of as far as I'm concerned).

 

[KayAU]

It's less of a delayed investment, that's all. Its actual cost over the course of the game is exactly the same since its upgrade cost is increased to reflect its lowered building cost (30g to 50g). And the global decrease to districts means Egypt gets fewer "free" hammers than it did before. Overall Egypt is just a little bit weaker than it was, and a bit easier to play.

Good points, didn't think too hard about that. My comparison is only for the current situation when the units come into play. They both upgrade to Crossbowmen, at that point I guess the production cost is balanced out somewhat. Anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that the Pitati Archer is a great deal better than the Maryannu. The Pitati was made even better by the increased production cost for regular Archers. Nubia can now always build their UU faster than other civs can build their regular Archers, other things being equal. I updated my calculations for that as well in the other thread.

 

[shaglio]

I'm guessing instead of dumping all their envoys into 1 city state to get suzerain, they may spread them out a bit to get the 1,3, and 6 bonuses. Which is what I often do.

Could it also mean they're more likely to Levy a CS's military during war?

 

[Photi]

I'm liking pretty much everything here except, as others have said, the settler cost increase. Maybe I'll want to pay attention to walls now, especially if going for a culture victory.

Don't know yet if my incomplete Pericles game (with a bunch of mods) will load, but I won't mind too much if it doesn't, as it will be fun to pay him again sometime with the Acropolis buff.

i've got the urge to play Gorgo to try out the envoys. maybe stack it with the envoy wonder as well and go for an envoy-economy wonder-building culture victory, with bunch of stolen cities due to settler increase.

on the settler cost, possibly they are doing it to slow expansion and increase minimum turn times to victory. which imo would be a good goal, but if that can be sidestepped by warmongering, then the goal not really accomplished.

 

[Archon_Wing]

War was only productive in Civ V because it was easy, as the AI was poor defensively, and from what I've played Civ VI is even worse in this regard thanks to the weakening of city defence and the AI's near-refusal to garrison with ranged units. The actual reward for taking territory wasn't important after the early game, since you need the time to build up the captured cities before they become useful. My point was that the actual direct reward from warfare was not valuable - strategic resources aren't useful in quantity save in Civ V, where they became obsolete sufficiently quickly that half the time by the time you captured the city you didn't need it. Tile outputs from other resources weren't worth the investment needed to take the cities either. If the AI could put up more of a fight it would be completely uneconomical. It was also a favoured way to play Civ V to play tall, so that you didn't really want further cities anyway.

It was more pronounced in Civ V than in earlier games, but those too had an 'expansion phase' where it was productive to go to war, and the mid- to late-game when the map was full and the only real reason to go to war was to up your score for domination or diplo victory. In those cases you still aren't caring unduly about fighting over the map or the actual output of the city - you're just grabbing cities for the population or score increase.

Well, Civ V is a bit anomalous as a game that focused on the tall style as well as escalating science/culture costs, making it more difficult to put more cities into the empire. IV and VI really aren't like that since more cities are almost always better and captured cities can be highly beneficail in yields. In IV, any time you have a key military tech is a good time to war.

As for VI, I had a game where I forced Cleopatra to give up most of my cities and I went from worst in science to top science since it had more than doubled because she had developed campuses.

And of course, the direct benefit of warfare is simple-- denial. Thus, it tends to be the optimal strategy of preventing people from winning, and that to me, is an overriding incentive.