Summer 2017 Patch Notes Discussion

[Eagle Pursuit]

After seeing the new desert mountains, I feel like Firaxis missed an opportunity to make something more distinctive, like mesas.

 

[stinkubus]

Canyons could be sweet, too.

 

[God of Kings]

Canyons could be sweet, too.

Add in the Grand Canyon while we're at it!

 

[HF22]

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.

I am really hating this bug. Every patch creating yet more bugs is starting to wear thin.

 

[bite]

After seeing the new desert mountains, I feel like Firaxis missed an opportunity to make something more distinctive, like mesas.

unless they have a mesa Natural Wonder in the pipeline

 

[stinkubus]

Add in the Grand Canyon while we're at it!

A four tile natural wonder which grants a huge tourism boost if you make a national park out of it?

 

[victorINascx]

Serious bug about the great work, AI tends to trade you their writing for merely 1 gold, and sometimes they could rise a deal that they themselves don't agree..that's so weird.

 

[Peserwin]

Actually, alliances appear to be harder to get, I tried to ally 2 of my long-term friends for maps and the inspiration, but both refused. :< Before the patch, they were always quick to join!

Did you manage to get an alliance at all? I've been huggy with the whole world, with scythia the entire game, but no one wants to be my ally. Ever.

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

I'm sorry if anyone has already asked this:

I love the new patch, it really fixed a lot of the problems the game had before, albeit maybe a little TOO much.

Does anyone know if Firaxis has a hotfix planned in the near future?

 

[Shorlin]

Some thoughts on the patch:

-Biggest balance change is rams and towers obsoleting at civil engineering, in current game I am leaving it and going zoos/nationalism while going exclusively bottom half of tech tree so I can make the most of pure cav/tanks+seige towers.
-Nubia is stupidly strong with a close neighbour to archer rush, I had Gilgamesh and even his war-carts are no match for pitati archers. Blasting through deity domination atm feels like prince difficulty.
-Buffs to yields of plantations/quarries/camps (I think?) not in patch notes.. a bit odd.
-Adding voice to others saying diplomacy seems to of changed, AI is friendlier, getting open borders/delegations easier.
-One bug that haven't seen mentioned (no mods), If you harvest hill stone then build a mine, you get 2 gold from mine

 

[Victoria]

That is one thing that I do like. Alliances should be earned, not gained by merely having a friendship pact. I don't think alliances should be simply purchased like any other trade item. The willingness to form an alliance should be based on how long you've been friends, sharing religions/governments & providing preferable trade deals with them.....not being friends with their enemies should help too .

Did you manage to get an alliance at all? I've been huggy with the whole world, with scythia the entire game, but no one wants to be my ally. Ever.

Alliances are damn hard to get. 3 peaceful games and I never got one anywhere near early enough for a eureka.
I'll check the worth/cost table when I can get near the PC and note the changes.

Trading is definitely broken, as someone else mentioned I keep getting pop up where a deal is suggested by a civ but it's in a state of unacceptable to them. So they are suggesting a non workable deal.
I see no marks on things saying they are not willing to trade them but they can be selected and show as acceptable deals until you try and click the accept button.

Let's be positive though,

Trade routes show time left and are easy to continue the old route when they pop up.
I have done about 30'spy missions, all successful... maybe not so positive.

 

[sonicmyst]

Did you manage to get an alliance at all? I've been huggy with the whole world, with scythia the entire game, but no one wants to be my ally. Ever.

Alliance is so hard to come by, and if you do, the AI asks you to pay your GPT. I have screenshot in previous pages

 

[kaptajnen22]

I just finished first game with this patch - Emperor level as usual.

Took me 210 turns to make a domination victory with Alexander. AI seem more stupid than ever in war. Running around with Warrior Armees. Manage to win the game easy with the same 6 crossbowmen, upgraded to field cannons and later machine guns + 6 of my special horse unit, later upgraded to knights and tanks. I didnt need any other units. Even we were based on 2 different islands, AI didnt build any ships, planes - in the last turns Persia came with an AT-crew as highest unit enemy in whole game.

AI didnt build cityes as usual. All Civs except me had maximum 5 citys.

No idea what they have changed - but if this game is the new marker for how the game will develop - the aI is instead of broken in war - now completely broken in war.

 

[Victoria]

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

Globalsettings.xml has most of the modifiers, the rules as how they are applies over cities seems a bit of a mystery although quite rightly newly conquested and foreign cities get much more, larger cities and cities where units originated also get more. I thought this whole area had been worked out totally but you are right, it seems it's only been half baked.
One more thing to put on the testing list.

 

[Swissy]

The patch seems to be a bust for multiplayer. While the game is vastly more stable once launched, your going to have to put in significant effort to get the game going. Continuous stream of errors and lobby disconnects between players that regularly played games together before the patch. Even players that played a game together after the patch are having difficulties connecting for another game. Very frustrating.

 

[kb27787]

Some thoughts on the patch:

-Biggest balance change is rams and towers obsoleting at civil engineering, in current game I am leaving it and going zoos/nationalism while going exclusively bottom half of tech tree so I can make the most of pure cav/tanks+seige towers.
-Nubia is stupidly strong with a close neighbour to archer rush, I had Gilgamesh and even his war-carts are no match for pitati archers. Blasting through deity domination atm feels like prince difficulty.
-Buffs to yields of plantations/quarries/camps (I think?) not in patch notes.. a bit odd.
-Adding voice to others saying diplomacy seems to of changed, AI is friendlier, getting open borders/delegations easier.
-One bug that haven't seen mentioned (no mods), If you harvest hill stone then build a mine, you get 2 gold from mine

They're not obsolete at Civil Engineering.... you simply can't build them
Which, TBH, makes no sense from a gameplay/balance point of view.
In a real game, bring them along anyway... they will still work as long as the victim has not researched steel (regardless of whether or not you have civil engineering researched). Once they have steel, you can bring your ram up, but your normal units won't make a single dent in the wall with ram, and siege tower will not bypass it. (but if you attack another opponent who doesn't have steel, they still work... since steel is a super late tech, if you go for domination you will rarely run into an AI that has managed to reach the tech before you look at their SPT and decide to cream them before they get dangerous... unless they start of in a remote corner of the world isolated).

So actually, rams and towers will still be useful for 90% of the game, except maybe against deity Gilgamesh who goes for steel. You kinda need bombards/arties against such. I just tested and even a size 4 city with no districts takes almost no damage from musket corps with great general if they have steel. The patch made urban defenses OBSCENELY STRONG (even stronger than BNW cities) without siege units there's no taking such cities.

 

[Victoria]

since steel is a super late tech

England may also beeline steel as they beeline redcoats which is a couple of techs in front of steel.

Obscenely strong? They do not appear to have changed the way they work. It's just your infantry does 17% against them and by the time they have them they are that much tougher due to better unit strength. Need to check it out more but it seems it has not changed.

 

[agonistes]

450 turns in and some civs still have 1 city.

I thought this problem was gone for good. Its back.

 

[Shorlin]

They're not obsolete at Civil Engineering.... you simply can't build them

Yea, I misread the patch notes
I find it varies wildly game to game AI to AI how fast they tech, I'm expecting to hit that urban defences brick wall a lot.
I will miss the late game flock of helicopters with a tier4 promotion/great general/seige tower combo laying waste to everything

 

[kb27787]

England may also beeline steel as they beeline redcoats which is a couple of techs in front of steel.

Obscenely strong? They do not appear to have changed the way they work. It's just your infantry does 17% against them and by the time they have them they are that much tougher due to better unit strength. Need to check it out more but it seems it has not changed.

Of course I wasn't saying they necessarily made urban defenses combat strength different; not sure if they changed it or not (and if I recall, I think its strength depends on the number of techs the civ has I think...) The patch made it extremely strong in the regards that I cannot use my ram against them as I am used to! And I have to say it's a little weird... My muskets deal maybe like 1 damage (I could hardly see the blue bar move)? but only suffer maybe 20-30 points in return, if I'm going to do that little damage I had expected my musket to take 80 points or something instead, but no (and in common sense, that shouldn't happen... it was just a freaking 50-60+ strength city with no districts and no garrisoned units... no reason why they should take so much damage). And I tell you, (have been using rams all the time so I am not sure about this) there is something very strange when you are brute-force ramming your units into the city WITHOUT siege tower, and you managed to kill the surrounded city (bring the inside HP down) while the walls are still above 50-60% life. Is that supposed to be normal? It's like wall HP is much higher than city HP or something. On a different occasion my 3 bombards took maybe 3-4 turns to bring down the walls, but once the walls came down my 6 knight corps/musket corps one-shotted the city from almost full green HP in a single turn.