Upcoming patch info!

[jahsoldier]

Some good things to see here, but I really really hope this isn't all they meant when they said "we're making some changes to diplomacy that we think you'll like". Diplomacy doesn't need a few tweaks here and there, it needs a complete overhaul. Super serial about this if CiV's ever gonna be more than another war game, guys.

Well done on fixing the research agreement exploit. I noticed that on my very first game, I thought, "that's weird, surely that's exploitable". So yeah, well done for getting round to some playtesting at last.

Anyway, that's enough whinetrolling from me. I want this game to be good. Make it so. Please?

 

[rschissler]

I found this encouraging bit from the 2K Forums, that I copied and pasted here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Haggbart
Will there be other balance changes to the game?
For example increasing the yield or reducing the cost of certain more or less useless buildings (like watermills). And/or nerfing maritime city state bonuses?
There are more examples of similar character. For example military buildings like stables are more or less useless with the increased unit costs (you will make much fewer units compared to Civ IV, hence the bonuses are less useful). They need to be cheaper, OR more effective (consider effect vs simply making more military units).

Answered by 2K Greg:
We're constantly looking at all parts of the game to improve, balance included. Player feedback on these forums is nice, especially when constructive and organized

The first patch or two is going to focus on the sort of stuff you see here; a lot of bug fixes and fixes to major issues with the game. More delicate balance stuff will probably get more attention a little further down the road.

 

[DoubleAG]

I found this encouraging bit from the 2K Forums, that I copied and pasted here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Haggbart
Will there be other balance changes to the game?
For example increasing the yield or reducing the cost of certain more or less useless buildings (like watermills). And/or nerfing maritime city state bonuses?
There are more examples of similar character. For example military buildings like stables are more or less useless with the increased unit costs (you will make much fewer units compared to Civ IV, hence the bonuses are less useful). They need to be cheaper, OR more effective (consider effect vs simply making more military units).

Answered by 2K Greg:
We're constantly looking at all parts of the game to improve, balance included. Player feedback on these forums is nice, especially when constructive and organized

The first patch or two is going to focus on the sort of stuff you see here; a lot of bug fixes and fixes to major issues with the game. More delicate balance stuff will probably get more attention a little further down the road.

If everyone posted like that then Civ V would be the best civ in no time.

 

[Ktulu]

Morrowind was pretty good.

Same for the KotOR series.

I could go on...

I played civ2 on a console at one point in time... everything went downhill from there

 

[toft]

Seriously disappointed that they didn't "fix" the resign/replay option... wake me up when that happens.

 

[Thormodr]

I'm reading over your post history. All your posts are about how it's a bad game. I'm trying to find out where you said why it was, though, and I'm coming up short. I literally cannot find any criticism on a particular subject, only real general stuff. You constantly say you want stuff fixed, but even if the devs were listening, I don't think they'd know exactly what changes you'd want to make, or any specifics that you dislike.

Got a link to one of your posts?

Read my thread I posted about god game design versus board game design. I have expressed intelligent enough arguments in the past as well, as have countless others. There is no need to repeat myself.

Frankly, I only care that they fix things now so that the franchise stays afloat. If they don't then Civ is done. It won't survive that.
I have little interest in playing ciV because the design frankly doesn't appeal to me.
Even if it is polished and perfected it'll be little more than a war game with some token empire building thrown in. The immediate future is certainly bleak for us builder types.

I am sure they'll go back to a god game design for Civ VI so I want the franchise to be around to make that.

 

[user746383]

Have a look at the steam stats. Just 0.4% of players have the immortal achivement. The concerns of the harder difficulty people just wouldnt be ranking high on their priorities right now.

That makes me a sad panda. :`(

 

[Celevin]

Read my thread I posted about god game design versus board game design. I have expressed intelligent enough arguments in the past as well, as have countless others. There is no need to repeat myself.

Frankly, I only care that they fix things now so that the franchise stays afloat. If they don't then Civ is done. It won't survive that.
I have little interest in playing ciV because the design frankly doesn't appeal to me.
Even if it is polished and perfected it'll be little more than a war game with some token empire building thrown in. The immediate future is certainly bleak for us builder types.

I am sure they'll go back to a god game design for Civ VI so I want the franchise to be around to make that.

I saw that, I thought it was someone else's post. My bad.

The reason I brought it up is I'm wary lately of rampant anger. I find it hard to post in the general forums because I'm often shut down, in another thread a random person practically said "you like Civ5? there's no way you were good at Civ4". I often can never find the source of those peoples' grievances.

I've actually found myself playing a builder game in Civ5 quite a bit. My experiences vary, it's not as deep as Civ4 in that regard but it has potential. If they fix Puppets, Maritime city states, and how much food is needed to grow large cities, I could see it being more satisfying than Civ4. Mainly I enjoy how I don't need a specific civic to use 2 different currencies for making units/buildings, and of how science is separate from those again. In Civ4 I found I was making population to make hammers and science and that was it.

If you could change one very specific thing in an easy-to-implement way to improve things, to regain the god feeling even just slightly, what would you do?

 

[Pachacuti]

We all know that games as complex as this will need patches. But my question is simply this: Why do companies release games that are still in such sorry shape? I would much rather be told that the game was going to come out late than to spend hours and hours playing a broken game. To give just ONE of many examples, I spent a very long time playing a game on a huge map on marathon speed. But I wasn't able to finish it because it froze on every turn. Even if one saves every turn, that is simply way too frustrating to keep playing. Didn't a play-tester ever play on a huge map? And if 2K/Firaxis knew it was broken, why didn't they just not allow huge maps until a patch fixed the problem?

 

[DamienDCLXVI]

IMO a 'demolish building' option that costs hammers and takes small amount of turns would be more balanced than the ability to immediately get rid of buildings for cash.

I had been thinking of different ways to remove unwanted buildings as well. Selling for small amount of gold and demolish without gold return seem popular choices but are there some alternate ways to try it?

How about cutting the Maintenance cost 1 each turn till it degrades? (Kind of like razing cities... don't hate me please!)

Demolish takes the same number of turns to chop a forest and return a token number of hammers?

On the even wilder side of the spectrum how about selling building only stops you from paying upkeep and getting the benefit but rebuilding it in that city goes quicker since you are just restoring a condemned building?

On the whole I would say the instant solutions are least annoying to the player although not the most realistic. I would prefer getting some hammers back (either a percentage of the cost or a token number as with unit disbands) because it makes more sense for building materials to be used on other projects than for someone to be buying your old city walls brick by brick.

...Unless that wall was in Berlin I guess. Then it's fair game and a piece of it will come with my Special Edition package of "World in Conflict"

 

[toft]

I saw that, I thought it was someone else's post. My bad.

The reason I brought it up is I'm wary lately of rampant anger. I find it hard to post in the general forums because I'm often shut down, in another thread a random person practically said "you like Civ5? there's no way you were good at Civ4". I often can never find the source of those peoples' grievances.

I've actually found myself playing a builder game in Civ5 quite a bit. My experiences vary, it's not as deep as Civ4 in that regard but it has potential. If they fix Puppets, Maritime city states, and how much food is needed to grow large cities, I could see it being more satisfying than Civ4. Mainly I enjoy how I don't need a specific civic to use 2 different currencies for making units/buildings, and of how science is separate from those again. In Civ4 I found I was making population to make hammers and science and that was it.

If you could change one very specific thing in an easy-to-implement way to improve things, to regain the god feeling even just slightly, what would you do?

I think the "problem" is:

• The empire building has been streamlined to it's very core.
• The combat mechanics have been made more entertaining, and it isn't a burden in the endgame / late eras.

The game is suffering from it's own success in implementing game-mechanics that are streamlined and fun. You suddenly use more time waging wars than building empires. The UI / mechanics aren't immersive as a "god"-game - they serve as a means to fast execution of commands. It is just too simple now.

I would like to see more features or mini-games within the game:

• Palace
• Replay
• Statistical data over time
• A lot better AI and tradewindow
• Worldbuilder ingame
• More worker options, not just A or B improvement

 

[jacyp]

Have a look at the steam stats. Just 0.4% of players have the immortal achivement. The concerns of the harder difficulty people just wouldnt be ranking high on their priorities right now.

That's because people still play the game thinking about CIV 4. I challenge everyone to raise their difficulty level to immortal and play the game. Just make 3 horsemen and win already.

The difficulty don't need to be balanced. It's the AI who needs to be fixed.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I am sure they'll go back to a god game design for Civ VI so I want the franchise to be around to make that.

Right.... why are you sure of this?

I don't really agree with your Godgame/Boardgame premise, but I think you're saying that you feel that Civ6 will feel more like Civ4.

I hate to tell you this, but many people I know that couldn't get into Civ4 really like Civ5. Remember, really strong feelings of fan X don't make up for the moderate feelings of fan Y Z A B C D E F G. This is the "hardcore fan fallacy." Your $50 spends the same as any casual player. You can't hate Civ5 enough to make up for the fact that 10 other people like it enough to pay for it.

As for me, I enjoy both for different reasons as I've expressed elsewhere. I'm spending tons of time with Civ4 as I wait for patches, but at the same time I await the patches with anticipation.

But all of that said...

Right.... why are you sure of this?

 

[Thormodr]

I saw that, I thought it was someone else's post. My bad.

The reason I brought it up is I'm wary lately of rampant anger. I find it hard to post in the general forums because I'm often shut down, in another thread a random person practically said "you like Civ5? there's no way you were good at Civ4". I often can never find the source of those peoples' grievances.

I've actually found myself playing a builder game in Civ5 quite a bit. My experiences vary, it's not as deep as Civ4 in that regard but it has potential. If they fix Puppets, Maritime city states, and how much food is needed to grow large cities, I could see it being more satisfying than Civ4. Mainly I enjoy how I don't need a specific civic to use 2 different currencies for making units/buildings, and of how science is separate from those again. In Civ4 I found I was making population to make hammers and science and that was it.

If you could change one very specific thing in an easy-to-implement way to improve things, to regain the god feeling even just slightly, what would you do?

Very reasonable post. I'm sorry if other members have been rude to you. Even if I dislike ciV, we are all still Civ fans here.

If I could change one thing I think it'd be redoing the resource system. Certainly the idea of strategic resources being consumed by units/buildings is an excellent one. However, the luxury resources are all really bland. +5 happiness across the board. very dull. I think having luxury resources function similarly to strategic resources would be a step in the right direction. Say 1 unit of a strategic resource per city or maybe per 10 units of population in a city. Food resources are also quite dull and unimaginative. They really need to make them useful. Health did that very well.

Naturally, there are many, many other things that would need to be changed. That was just one little thing. Don't get me started on Global Happiness or the Bribelomatic victory.

I am of the opinion that basically the core of the game would have to be changed to make it immersive enough. The game is quite heavily tilted towards warfare and that's no shock as that's what JS likes and he designed a game based on what he likes. It's just not what I like unfortunately.

 

[Thormodr]

Right.... why are you sure of this?

I don't really agree with your Godgame/Boardgame premise, but I think you're saying that you feel that Civ6 will feel more like Civ4.

I hate to tell you this, but many people I know that couldn't get into Civ4 really like Civ5. Remember, really strong feelings of fan X don't make up for the moderate feelings of fan Y Z A B C D E F G. This is the "hardcore fan fallacy." Your $50 spends the same as any casual player. You can't hate Civ5 enough to make up for the fact that 10 other people like it enough to pay for it.

As for me, I enjoy both for different reasons as I've expressed elsewhere. I'm spending tons of time with Civ4 as I wait for patches, but at the same time I await the patches with anticipation.

But all of that said...

Right.... why are you sure of this?

The reason I say this is that in the business world, $$$ talks. cIV sold extremely well. Over 3 million copies I believe.

In my opinion, I don't think ciV will sell as well. When Firaxis and 2K Games sees this, I think they'll go back to their roots. As a business, it would be a sound decision.

Radical change is not always good. Just look at the cluster flock of birds that is Final Fantasy XIV.

Anyway, I guess we'll see. I don't see ciV outselling cIV though.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Anyway, I guess we'll see. I don't see ciV outselling cIV though.

Yes, but how could a businessman divine the cause of the lower sales? Aren't games in general selling notably more poorly than they were when Civ4 was released?

 

[Grunthex]

Revolutions ruined the future of the PC format--once the (any) game goes to console, it/they will never be as good again.

So basically the civ series has been dead since Civ 2? I know that Civ 1 was ported to consoles (SNES at least) at some point, not sure if it was before or after the Civ 2 release.

You should think these things through before you spout.

 

[Thormodr]

Yes, but how could a businessman divine the cause of the lower sales? Aren't games in general selling notably more poorly than they were when Civ4 was released?

Quite possibly. PC games are not selling as well as they used to. However, if the game does sell more poorly than cIV, that'll be their job to ascertain what the problem was.

If they honestly ask their fans, I think the main reason will be that people feel there was a lack of immersion and empire building with ciV that was a lot more present in the previous 4 games.

Firaxis will take that to heart and design Civ VI with that in mind.

Just my opinion of course.

 

[PieceOfMind]

What data do we have on sales trends for civ5? And how do they compare to the similar data for civ4 before expansion packs were produced?

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

What data do we have on sales trends for civ5? And how do they compare to the similar data for civ4 before expansion packs were produced?

Will someone find the facts. Too lazy to mine the vast resource of past informations in the intuhnet.