Why is the game changing when there has not been a patch for years?

[TractorBoy]

Upon returning to the VANILLA version and fiddling about with Settler and Chieftan levels, I have found the following. Barbarians do not enter culture borders any more and as a consequence they do not steal workers which makes it very difficult to become allied to City States in the early game. The other difficulty is having to hard build my workers which I used to obtain for free.

I have the VANILLA and G&K combined package and do not own the BNW version, could any one please tell me why these changes to the original version are still occurring?

 

[Arcaian]

Upon returning to the VANILLA version and fiddling about with Settler and Chieftan levels, I have found the following. Barbarians do not enter culture borders any more and as a consequence they do not steal workers which makes it very difficult to become allied to City States in the early game. The other difficulty is having to hard build my workers which I used to obtain for free.

I have the VANILLA and G&K combined package and do not own the BNW version, could any one please tell me why these changes to the original version are still occurring?

Patches are applied to the whole game, including vanilla. Balance changes are meant to be for everyone, not just those who pay more!

Your point about the workers can be fixed by stealing the worker and making peace the same turn.

 

[TractorBoy]

Patches are applied to the whole game, including vanilla. Balance changes are meant to be for everyone, not just those who pay more!

What might be a balance change for one version has become an imbalance change for the other. I have tinkered with G&K enough to know that each City State can have up to three quests all of which contribute towards your chances of becoming allied. Playing vanilla on the other hand there is only ever one quest at best so capturing and returning CS workers was an integral part of becoming allied.

Your point about the workers can be fixed by stealing the worker and making peace the same turn.

Yes you can steel a worker, maybe more, but you are limited to only one CS and depending on your game plan stealing from the AI might be detrimental. Stealing a captured worker on the other hand does not upset anyone.

Has the game play of barbarians not entering cultural borders always been in place for the other two versions?

EDIT - Another difference that I have noticed; A couple of years back playing vanilla low level games, there would be loads of quests to take out barb camps from very early in the game. Now it seems the first quest is more likely to be to conquer another CS and this does not happen until further into the game.

 

[LoneRebel]

Um, I am pretty sure that barbarians never enter civ cultural borders on Settler difficulty, and will only enter them very late in the game on Chieftain difficulty. Not sure about CS cultural borders.

That has always been the case.

 

[Paszczak]

Upon returning to the VANILLA version and fiddling about with Settler and Chieftan levels, I have found the following. Barbarians do not enter culture borders any more

When was the last time you remember barbarians entering your borders on Settler? I'm pretty sure they never did.

That being said don't forget that dumb flawed AI will often move workers between cities without protection so they might still get stolen by barbs.

 

[TractorBoy]

LoneRebel & Paszczak, I notice you did not join the forum until 2013, this ofcourse does not mean you were not playing CivV VANILLA previously. Well, you could both be right, it is certainly a possibility that time (years) has fuddled my memories. How ever I am definitely right about one thing, there are fewer quests to take out barb camps than there used to be. I quite naturally put this down to the fact that barbs do not enter the territory of CSs.

 

[Chum]

Don't play on settler and chieftain? I dunno, seems like an easy fix.

Honestly, they're probably right, that it has always been in place. Barbarians are the only threat to those difficulty levels since no AI will declare war on you on those levels either. That makes perfect sense from a difficulty standpoint, as the surefire way to get people to not play your game is to have them overrun with barbarian camps while they're still figuring out how the game works.

I don't have an ironclad memory of how all the game mechanics worked in vanilla, but I don't think anything has changed.

 

[Browd]

In all versions of the game, on Settler, barbs will not enter your culture borders until turn 10,000 (i.e., never):

<EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>10000</EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>

On Chieftain, they can enter your culture borders after turn 60:

<EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>60</EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>

These are Standard turn times, by the way.

 

[NASAROG]

Whoa, someone plays on Settler? I meant Chieftain&#8230;.. More power to you.

On another note, Browd, can you please share the barbarian territorial invasion time of each difficulty level?

Thanks.

 

[Browd]

Warlord is turn 20 and every other level is turn 0.

 

[joncnunn]

It doesn't look like those release turns scale for game speed either. (On Warlord it's still turn 20 weather you are on Quick or Marathon)

 

[NASAROG]

Warlord is turn 20 and every other level is turn 0.

Ah, that explains a lot. I expect the barbarian horde to crash my party before the party even starts. Do they attach the A.I. just as diligently?

 

[Browd]

Not so much, since the AI gets bonuses vs. barbs -- barbs assess combat odds and choose "weaker" prey.

 

[TractorBoy]

In all versions of the game, on Settler, barbs will not enter your culture borders until turn 10,000 (i.e., never):

<EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>10000</EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>

On Chieftain, they can enter your culture borders after turn 60:

<EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>60</EarliestBarbarianReleaseTurn>

These are Standard turn times, by the way.

Thanks Browd & Joncnunn.

At the turn of the year I had a brief look at G&K, and came to a similar conclusion to these facts that you have outlined. Unlike other people I am quite comfortable playing the game at low levels and find my own rewards for whatever I might achieve by playing them. 1,000 hrs at these levels and still learning!

It is a fact that one thing has changed on the VANILLA version due to a patch designed for G&K, (workers not working) which is in the confirmed bug section. Like I said earlier, there is a distinct possibility that my memory of VANILLA low levels is incorrect. Could you please confirm whether these barbarian invasion facts have always been in place since the games conception?

 

[Mudrac]

The things have always been like this on Settler, Barbs never entered your territory even back in VANILLA. And in VANILLA City-States only gave you 1 quest, and that 1 quest was always only active, so that's why the only real way to ally them was to give them a of bunch gold. This changed in G&K when City-States started giving you multiple quests. The changes I can think of regarding some of the new patches, was that the icons of Workers, Work Boats and Great People change once you enter the Industrial Era. I think none of the other changes were done in these patches that affected VANILLA and G&K except this one. As for Workers not working the tiles in G&K? I really don't know what is the cause of it?

 

[NASAROG]

Tractorboy - my comment wasn't meant to insult. I personally find the lowest difficulties boring, but hey, it's your game and you should play/enjoy it any way you want.

 

[Browd]

Sorry, TractorBoy, but I don't have any pre-patch files (vanilla or otherwise), so I can't verify what the game settings were before the numerous patches were applied. You are correct that some patches in G&K and BNW also fixed bugs in vanilla, but I don't think they intended to change vanilla game rules--just fix bugs.

You can rummage through the various patch notes to see if anything jumps out. Here is a compilation of all the various patch notes: http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php?89117-Patch-Notes

 

[NASAROG]

Browd - one more question if you don't mind. At the lowest settings, can you still get a settler/worker as a prize for discovering an ancient ruin?

 

[Browd]

Just when playing Settler.

 

[joncnunn]

Thanks Browd & Joncnunn.
Could you please confirm whether these barbarian invasion facts have always been in place since the games conception?

I can't verify from game inception, but can state that the time stamp for CivVHandicapInfo (vanilla version) is September 19, 2011; so that hasn't changed since then for Vanilla players.

But I can also confirm that some of the patches releases after G&K and BNW came out had impact to Vanilla.
For instance, in that same directory for vanilla I can see the timestamp of CivVGameOptions & CivVPlayerOptions both are July 7, 2013. I'm thinking a new multiplayer option was added for everyone then (and not just BNW players).