Summer 2017 Patch Notes Discussion

[MadDjinn]

• Battering Ram and Siege Tower now upgrade to the Medic support unit, and no longer are functional against a city with Urban Defenses

Bombard class just became a lot more useful/needed

until you realize where Urban Defense is now.

 

[Snerk]

Looks pretty good. I'll try and get a new game started soon.

 

[_Hannibal_]

Has anyone else noticed a font increase in diplomacy screen? Also text seems to have anothter background.

Me, I posted it too.

 

[Disgustipated]

any new maps with this expansion?

Or just wishful thinking?

 

[Leyrann]

Interesting: There seem to be some disparities between the game and the civilopedia, as well as some more unmentioned changes:

The camp I built gave +2 gold instead of +1 gold (Civilopedia says +1, as does the tooltip). This might also be a Nubia bug, however.
Additionally, and unless I am very mistaken this was added in this patch, the mercantilism civic gives +1 food and +1 production (according to mercantilism tooltip and civilopedia entry) or maybe +1 food +2 production (according to camp tooltip and civilopedia entry).

Update on this one: I was actually messing up camp and plantation for the first one (not for the second one). Tooltips indeed do say plantation grants +2 gold, which is a buff.

 

[MadDjinn]

the patch notes listed on CFC are incomplete. Actual patch notes are here:
(edit: blame 2K. the patch notes on steam are accurate, the patch notes on civilization.com were wrong)
[NEW]

Nubia

• Civ Unique Ability: +50% Production toward Ranged units. All Ranged units earn promotions 50% faster. Mines over strategic resources are +1 Production. Mines over bonus and luxury resources are +2 Gold.
  
• Queen Amanitore Unique Ability: Kandake of Meroë - +20% Production on all districts rising to +40% if the city contains a Nubian Pyramid adjacent to the City Center.
  
• Pitati Archer: Replaces the Archer. Stronger than the Archer with +1 Movement.
  
• Nubian Pyramid: Improvement. +1 Faith. Receives additional yields from adjacent districts. +1 Food if adjacent to a city center. For all other districts that award adjacency bonuses: +1 of the appropriate yield if that district is adjacent. Desert, Desert Hills, Floodplains.
  Jebel Barkal Wonder
  
• Unlocked at Iron Working. Awards 2 free Iron and +4 Faith to Cities within 6 tiles.
  ‘Gifts of the Nile’ Scenario
  The Nile River is the life-blood of not one ancient civilization, but two: Egypt and Nubia. Although these neighbors and trade partners shared a common river valley and supreme deity (Amun) they were often in direct competition if not outright war. In this head-to-head competitive scenario, you will take the role of one of these powers to see who can truly become the most worthy disciple of the great god Amun by being the first player to create 7 Temples in his honor.
  
• Added Restart button to regenerate the map
  
• Added the saving of game setup configurations to reuse when starting future games

[GENERAL BALANCE CHANGES]

• Reduced the cost of the Aqueduct by 30%, and Sewers by 50%
  
• Reduced cost of all other districts by 10%
  
• Increased the discount for districts you have less of from 25% to 40%
  Increased costs of district buildings by 10% (except Aerodrome buildings), and increased per settler cost bump by 50%
  
• Reduced cost of all spies by 25%
  
• The Hanging Gardens now provides +2 Housing in city it is built
  
• Walls now provide Tourism, and do not have Maintenance
  
• Battering Ram and Siege Tower now upgrade to the Medic support unit, and no longer are functional against a city with Urban Defenses
  
• Gave St George an additional Charge
  
• Updated Monarchy's Medieval Wall bonus to: "+50% Production toward defensive buildings. +1 Housing for each level of wall."
  
• Proselytizer Apostle Promotion only evicts 75% of existing pressure of other religions, not 100%.
  
• Press Gangs will now unlock with Exploration and Native Conquest with Colonialism.
  
• Increased Anti-Air strength values by 5 across the board. Increased Destroyer AA strength to match other units of the same era.
  
• Balance Change to Archer (cost +10) and Maryannu Chariot Archer (cost -20, combat +2, ranged strength +2)
  
• Increased cost to repair city outer defenses
  
• Moved “Urban Defenses” from Civil Engineering to Steel

[CIV & LEADER SPECIFIC BALANCE CHANGES]

• 
  Norway
• Thunderbolt of the North gains +50% production of naval melee units
  
• Stave Church gains +1 Production for all Coastal resources in the city
  
  Spain
  
• Treasure Fleet civ ability has its gold for intercontinental trade boosted from +4 to +6.
  
• Mission: increase from +1 Science to +2 Science if next to a Campus.
  
  
• Scythia’s heal down from 50 to 30.
  
• Kongo: 50% more Great People points rather than double.
  
• Greece: Award an envoy whenever they complete an Acropolis.
  
• 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.

[MAP GENERATION]

• Aluminum may now appear on Plains
  
• Increased Lake generation
  
• Updated Bonus and Strategic Sea resource generation
  
• Fixed river generation on Inland Sea maps

[UI ENHANCEMENTS]

• Combat Preview UI has received multiple improvements
  
• The Civilopedia now shows the number of spies/envoys granted by a civic
  
• Multi-turn unit movement paths shown when unit reselected
  
• Add Relationships tab to city state Intel Reports which displays that city state's at war status with other civs and city states
  
• A popup box is now used to modify deal item values
  
• Added leader dialog for Gifts and Demands
  
• Scenarios no longer display extraneous UI screens
  
• Reports now displays great works, adjacency, and districts information
  
• Trade Route chooser automatically selects previously completed trade route
  
• Additional improvements to the Trade Route chooser
  
• Added a turn blocker notification when city ranged attack is available
  
• Tech and Civic Boosts now additionally appear in the notification panel above the turn advancer.
  
• A Toggle Strategic View keybinding has been added

[DIPLOMACY ENHANCEMENTS]

• Added tooltips explaining why you can or cannot declare each kind of war or undertake another diplomatic action.
  
• “Are you sure you want to denounce?” confirmation added
  
• Liberation changes:
  - Liberating cities can now occur even if you got the city in a deal (peace deals are the most common case of this).
  - A case where the Persian player didn't see "(cede)" or "(return)" besides cities on the peace deal screen has been fixed.
  - When you liberate a city-state your military units are only kicked back from the first ring of hexes around the city; you aren't ejected from their territory entirely.

[AI TUNING]

• Improved AI ability to move great works around to get theming
  
• AI will now better handle air attacks
  - Bombers will attack Districts, Improvements, and then Units in that preference
  - Fighters will prefer to attack other air units
  
• Improved desire to pillage cities
  
• Improved city planning with regard to adjacency bonuses
  
• During city attacks, concentrate unit attacks on more threatening units rather than spreading out
  
• Fixed a bug that resulted in the AI overestimating the value of demand tribute
  
• Adjust AI acceptance of embassies to be a bit more like what they already do for delegations
  
• Specifically, they probably will reject it if they're unfriendly, will accept at neutral unless they have any other reason against it (close balance) and will generally accept it at friendly unless they have a strong reason against.
  
• In evaluating deals, the AI will mark elements that are unacceptable at any price, and expose that to the player
  
• Improve ability to utilize city-states, beyond just suzerainty
  
• As a player approaches victory, AI will become less friendly and more aggressive

[MULTIPLAYER]

• Improved stability after receiving a multiplayer join error
  
• Fixed unnecessary host migration when exiting a LAN game
  
• Fixed an occasional hang during wars in dynamic turn mode
  
• Miscellaneous UI fixes and stability improvements

[BUG FIXES]

• Fixed an issue where plot tooltips would show when we didn’t want them to
  
• Fixed multiple issues with Air combat
  
• City Banners were not reacting to population changed events
  
• Barbarian camp art will now update as the game progresses into later eras
  
• Fixed an issue where pillaged improvements lost their pantheon bonuses forever
  
• District repair costs now computed properly based on both game speed and start era. Will always be 25% of the cost of creating a new district of that type.
  
• Correct Alexander’s “To the World’s End” healing ability so it only triggers if the city has a COMPLETED wonder in it.
  
• Wonders should always be repairable after they have been hit by a nuclear blast
  
• Fixed issues with Reports screen totals not adding correctly
  
• Additional bug fixes.

[MISC]

• Added new visualization for desert mountains

Moderator Action: OP revised to include complete patch notes -- Browd

 

[Disgustipated]

cultural starting position link seems new...

 

[Disgustipated]

New change (at least for me): You get the boost for writing even upon meeting another civ's settler, even if they have yet to build their first city. Before you wouldn't get the boost until they built their first city.

Yes I'm playing Firaxi's TLC Earth instead of the yet another map mod large Earth TLC I usually play (since Nubia would probably show up someplace weird since that isn't updated). Unfortunately with random civilizations Egypt is right next to me. sigh. That's why I usually don't do random civilizations. I may restart and pick my opponents.

 

[Brutus2]

Nice updates to the report screen. Can sort cities by yields and shows current deals, trade routes and units.

 

[PYITE]

until you realize where Urban Defense is now.

• Moved “Urban Defenses” from Civil Engineering to Steel

Agreed

I didn't notice the change on first read through the notes

 

[Disgustipated]

Moved “Urban Defenses” from Civil Engineering to Steel

Wow, I didn't see that either. That's going to change my whole strategy and beelines around in the civics tree.

 

[Leathaface]

Playing Emperor difficulty, it appears the AI is settling cities much quicker than normal. I'm in the classical era yet Poland has 8 cities and England 7 cities.

 

[Negan]

So......no improvement to AI navies or am I just foolish and missed something?

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I like the civ specific balance changes - really glad they added some more bonuses for France, Norway, Egypt, and Spain. Norway looks significantly stronger now. I'm not sure Greece needs those extra envoys though - they might go up a tier for that.

I'm very interested to see how aggressive the AI gets when a player approaches victory - hopefully this means a more competitive endgame where the AI will make some alliances or ramp up the pressure on culture/science.

General balance changes look good for the most part and finally a restart option! I wish they had done a little more with a religion and diplomacy but I expect that will come in at the expansion.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Are tech and civic trees changed?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

So......no improvement to AI navies or am I just foolish and missed something?

Looks like they might have preferentially improved AI air this time. However, if a civ in the next DLC has a naval focus *cough* Indonesia *cough*, maybe they will address that issue then.

 

[Archon_Wing]

• Reduced the cost of the Aqueduct by 30%, and Sewers by 50%

• Reduced cost of all other districts by 10%

• Increased the discount for districts you have less of from 25% to 40%
  Increased costs of district buildings by 10% (except Aerodrome buildings), and increased per settler cost bump by 50%

• Reduced cost of all spies by 25%

Great changes, considering the complaints about housing and district costs and in general stuff taking time to build.

• Updated Monarchy's Medieval Wall bonus to: "+50% Production toward defensive buildings. +1 Housing for each level of wall.

Moved “Urban Defenses” from Civil Engineering to Steel

Walls are now more relevant.

• Norway

• Thunderbolt of the North gains +50% production of naval melee units

• Stave Church gains +1 Production for all Coastal resources in the city
  
  Spain

• Treasure Fleet civ ability has its gold for intercontinental trade boosted from +4 to +6.

• Mission: increase from +1 Science to +2 Science if next to a Campus.

• Scythia’s heal down from 50 to 30.

Very much needed.

Kongo: 50% more Great People points rather than double.

What :S Kongo wasn't even that OP.

“Are you sure you want to denounce?” confirmation added

lol

AI will now better handle air attacks

As in actually use them?

Barbarian camp art will now update as the game progresses into later eras

Cool.

Trade Route chooser automatically selects previously completed trade route

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111

As a player approaches victory, AI will become less friendly and more aggressive

Err.... so business as usual.

Well hopefully, performance is better, but good changes overall.

 

[Leyrann]

What :S Kongo wasn't even that OP.

I'm just saying. You might wanna edit this out before people read it.

 

[Piruparka]

So settler bump does not affect district buildings now, does it? I was a bit confused because it is mentioned together.

Do I get this right?

 

[Victoria]

What a lovely sight

soo many changes