Upcomming patch ruining the game?

[rastak]

Of course Im angry! Animal Husbandry reveals horses? It's like OMG I lived here for 20 years and I never saw these ton+ creatures on four leggs.

Don't patch your game if you don't like the effects.

 

[BigDogNate]

Personally I can live with the minor changes that are going to be made. The only thing I care about in this patch is I hope it gets rid of all of the bugs that kick me out of the game all of the time. If it can do that, I will be extremly happy.

 

[Galumphus]

I love all the people in this thread who are using real life to try to reason about the game "I would have seen the horses around" and "You didn't see the Uranium, did you?". Hello it is a game. That means not everything mirrors reality.

I for one thing it will be a good change, it will diversify opening strats.

 

[dh_epic]

To me, failing to recognize the strategic value of horses seems realistic until you understand you can domesticate them. Kind of the same way you can't recognize where you are on the world until you've actually explored it.

The strategic concerns, the way I see it, is that horses had an unfair advantage in being a "sure thing". Look at the other branches:

- bronze/iron: a chance that copper/iron will be further away
- religion: a chance someone will beat you to em
- early wonder: chance that someone will beat you to it
- horses: if you have eyes, you can guarantee when and where you'll be able to start using horses

A chance that horses might not be nearby is still quite balancing. You can still research animal husbandry and look for further horses if need be. It's not a total crap shoot. Just a gamble you have to be willing to accept -- they might be near, or far.

Besides the fact that someone found a HUUUUUUUUGE exploit involving horses that will win every game should you master it.

 

[SuperSloth]

i really hope they change the unit movements rates. it annoys me that it takes 100 years for my units to move across their own empire.

 

[danbosko]

I hope the worker tweak is something like a checkbox that tells the worker not to build over player made improvements. They're freakin obsessed with windmills...which imo are pretty worthless.

Artillery being 1 move sucks too. Might be overpowered or something with 2 move...duno, but having to move your 2 move units 1 tile a turn just to wait for the seige is teh suck. Gogo radar artillery please.

 

[Guagle]

To me, failing to recognize the strategic value of horses seems realistic until you understand you can domesticate them. Kind of the same way you can't recognize where you are on the world until you've actually explored it.

I wholeheartedly agree. To me the best features are both realistic and make for better strategic decisions, and moving horses to animal husbandry is it.

 

[MrCynical]

Moving the appearance of horses to animal husbandry seems a good thing to me. As has been said earlier, it makes going for the horse based units a guaranteed success, which isn't true for most other options. I also suspect some people used to restart until they saw they had horses right at their capital. In any case I'd have thought animal husbandry would be fairly early on most people's research list, as it's fairly unusual not to have any animals arounds, and you can get a big food/production boost from them.

 

[snepp]

I hope the worker tweak is something like a checkbox that tells the worker not to build over player made improvements. They're freakin obsessed with windmills...which imo are pretty worthless.

Check the game options, this "tweak" made it into the initial release.

 

[Abaddon]

Oh please wake up! this game needs patching bad- dont be against it.

If you dont like the patch- DONT DOWNLOAD IT!

 

[onedreamer]

actually case2: horses don't appear on the map, but I know they Might be there so I make a decision...beeline to AH so I can try and get them by placing my city near them and risk them not being present, or work on other techs first and risk losing horses that I Could have gotten.

Perfectly reasonable,

And I think for the Commerce bonus resources (Spices/dyes, I think the tech merely allows you to cultivate them on a large scale (ie the bonus goes beyond one city) so I would say they are the same as the grain, rice, Pigs, Bananas example.

nope sorry but you're sorely wrong here. That's not a decision, that's not strategy, that's a predetermined action. You have to research AH in order to start taking any strategic decision. I think a few strategic resources in the beginning should be visibile. One is stone, another one is and should stay horses.

 

[onedreamer]

I'd say it was an omission.

- You can't see if you're near copper or iron, so going for an axe or sword rush is a gamble.
- Religion is a gamble, since you can miss founding one by a single turn.

- Axe or Sword is not a gamble and not a choice. They are two completely different units that serve different aims.
- Religion is a gamble, but it has nothing to do with strategic resources.

 

[onedreamer]

I'm kind of echoing what Krikkitone said. But you're looking at it wrong. If you can see the horses before you have the tech then it's a no-brainer decision to go for animal husbandry. That's eliminating decision making when one decision is obviously the best one to make. Meanwhile if you can't see them then you really have to make a decision. Do I go for animal husbandry and risk finding out there are no horses or take the safe path and research something else?

Heh, disagree completely. How is researching AH a no-brainer decision ? I might want to found a religion instead or to build a wonder or to aim at other military solutions like copper/iron.

The bottom line of all this discussion is that the assumptions done by the pro-hidden horses are wrong. In fact, early chariots are in no way a win, and therefore they aren't a no-brainer path to follow at all. Archers are way easier to make than chariots and can stop them quite easily.

 

[onedreamer]

To me, failing to recognize the strategic value of horses seems realistic until you understand you can domesticate them. Kind of the same way you can't recognize where you are on the world until you've actually explored it.

The strategic concerns, the way I see it, is that horses had an unfair advantage in being a "sure thing". Look at the other branches:

- bronze/iron: a chance that copper/iron will be further away
- religion: a chance someone will beat you to em
- early wonder: chance that someone will beat you to it
- horses: if you have eyes, you can guarantee when and where you'll be able to start using horses

It's funny how you manipulate the reality to prove your point. If you see stone, you can guarantee when and where you will use it to rush the building of a wonder. Does this mean that you are guaranteed to finish the wonder first ? Nope. If you see horses, you can guarantee when and where you'll be able to start using horses. Sure thing. And... ? Does this guarantee you a victory, or any advantage over someone who instead sees Elephants or Marble from the beginning ? Hardly.

 

[Astax]

I dont like this change mostly because how the starting tech isnt arranged perfectly either. You could say that pottery and animal husbandry should be tier one techs. But for the sake of the game, they arent. Seeing Ivory from the begining is a pretty big one too. If you cant see horses why see elephants? Youc ans ay, well they used ivory for soemthing else. And then I would say, you are pwnt sir. You think before people rode horses they didnt eat them? HELL YEAH THEY ATE HORSES, they are DELICIOUS. I would eat em everyday! It wasnt till horses became more valuable as transportation, did they become more than a snack.

Eitherway this change will be something that will be hard for me to adjust to.

 

[Yao777]

And........who said that only horses would disappear? If horses have to be revealed then it's pretty safe to assume the same will go for elephants as well. I understand the whole horse rush thing when playing MP Astax, it's something that I use myself if the situation presents itself but, it isn't my only strategy. (Not saying it's your only strategy either.)

When a strategy of mine gets countered or is nerfed, it kinda gets my blood pumping to come up with something entirely new. All this patch will do is force you to come up with a new strategy which I think is fun.

Point is, nobody will know what the patch has in store for all of us until it is here. I wouldn't necessarily complain about something that hasn't been seen yet, nor complain over one trivial piece of the patch that in my opinion will balance the game out even more. Rushing strategies were never something truly meant for TBS games anyway.

 

[dh_epic]

- Axe or Sword is not a gamble and not a choice. They are two completely different units that serve different aims.
- Religion is a gamble, but it has nothing to do with strategic resources.

I'm not sure I get your point.

An axe rush is a gamble since copper might not be nearby when you discover it.
A sword rush is the same issue. You may end up spending another 20 turns just to get a city near iron.
Religion is a gamble too.

Why do you consider it balanced that you can see horses and guarantee a successful rush?

Does this guarantee you a victory, or any advantage over someone who instead sees Elephants or Marble from the beginning ?

In a word, yes.

Building a wonder is a gamble. You might lose it. If you can see horses, there's a guarantee. Nobody can "beat you" to horses. Not only that, but building an early wonder costs a lot of hammers and can make you extremely vulnerable.

Elephants come into play at construction. Enough time for other players to play a variety of opening strategies, but ultimately a smart and cautious player needs to build spears. They have ample time to pursue their branch of choice, and then build spears. Seeing ivory is balanced.

Horses, on the other hand, if you see them near your capitol you can guarantee a victory against at least one opponent before 1 AD. Chariots can be built and can choke an enemy before they even hook up copper. Not only does this force EVERY player to pursue the copper branch to counter the powerful horse branch, but even if they do, the copper can be cut off so quickly that it doesn't matter.

Adding a risk to the horse branch IS balanced. There's a risk on every other branch, after all.

Moreover, there's a huge exploit with chariots. If you see horses before you settle your first city, you can actually move the city on top of the horses. After you settle, you can get chariots out in the first 10-15 turns of the game. No worker required, no road, no pasture. The chariots come out so fast that the game is pretty much unplayable for your opponent.

 

[Aneurism]

Horses or no horses, I will be very happy to see this patch to fix the video related game crashes I have been experiencing.

 

[Jarrod32]

Not sure I wanna jump in to this one...but...

I'm gonna disagree with onedreamer about the strategy. If you can see the horses right away, it DICTATES strategy rather than creating it. If you can see the horses right away, you know to run to animal husbandry. If you can't, then the decision of where to place animal husbandry in your research sequence become a decision that the player needs to make...adding to the strategy. Rather than dictating (at least a part of) the research sequence, it puts the decision back into the players hands...where it belongs.

 

[Yahzi]

The problem with making any strategic resource visible right from the start is that the player can settle directly on the resource.

Building on a Gold plains hill is uber - you get 2 hammer 2 food 2 commerce from turn one. And +1 happiness once you get mining - without waiting for The Wheel and roads!

My question is, why did they make sugar, bananas, etc. visible?