[GS] Winter (September)(?) 2019 Patch speculation and discussion thread.

Ed’s on Twitter has made some interesting comments about having another look at Coastal Cities in the future. He’s also suggested they’ll fix the new RND bug. That suggests there might be another patch this year - maybe Q3/Q4 or “Winter” Patch?

I was just wondering what people thought should be priorities for the next patch - eg bugs, problems, areas that need more work?

I also thought people might like somewhere to post speculation.

Personally, I think another patch should take a look again at production. Shifting the IZ to be more about infrastructure is a good change, but it doesn’t quite work. And placing improvements has been dumbed down too much - LMs need to get back some sort of river bonus, and maybe quarries and Mines need more interesting placement rules.

I’ve noticed there has been a lot of criticism of the IZ and LM changes, including some streamers. So, I think it’s possible FXS might tweak this bit again, now they seem to have got the overall “amount” of hammers right.

I also think the Campus and science from City States need a look, particularly now FXS have tweaked research costs and Tier 3 buildings. It’s too easy to spam campuses and leverage them with City States. The game is never going to have a good pace unless Science gets harder to earn.

Looks like Coastal City will get some love. I hope they do, but I hope they get it by FXS focusing on some of the underlying mechanics rather that directly buffing them.

I also really hope FXS are a bit more careful not to dumb down mechanics. The production changes have that feel - FXS have sort of got rid of some of the interesting placement rules, but also got rid of some more interesting decisions (eg what to do with Rainforests).

(BTW, if you have specific suggestions, I have a thread in the I&S forum where you can post them. Link.)

 

I think perhaps we'll see a minor harbor/industrial adjacency or bonus. Perhaps lighthouses will give +1 production to coastal tiles if the harbor is next to an industrial zone or something like that.

I also think it's likely lumbermills will get their river adjacency back but I also think it won't be production because then they'll be too much. Maybe +2 gold if next to a river?

I assume that Georgia will also be buffed again. Maybe their wall will become 5 hammers cheaper again. That'll definitely fix them!

 

Ed also mentioned having a look at how Maori abilities work with Lumber Mills etc., so that might get another look too.

 

I expect they'll do a hot patch for RND since that was documented as fixed in this patch and wasn't.

I would hope for a "Late-Summer" or Fall 2019 patch after that.

 

There are 2 things I hope to see, both resulting increasing difficulty

1) AI more willing to build variety of districts and builders
2) mechanism limiting rapid expansion.
Expansion is needed, no more Civ5 absurds, but CivVI reaches the second edge of this madness.
Civ1-3 had corruption, Civ4 had fantastic maintanance model based on distance and number of cities, I really want it back, I dont think I will be able to play CivVI for a longer period, as after early expansion phase game is so easy even on deity. The game gives no challange at current shape

I want maintanaace based on number of cities, continents and possibly distrits back in exchange for lower construction cost of districts (so the AI would build it more often). Simply, expansion should be encouraged, but the initial cost of the city should be more painful. increasing settler cost is a very bad solution

 

What's the RND bug?

 

Why skip a season, Fall Patch?

Besides they need to make hotfixes more frequent. In this case with the CS/UI bug triggering that you are no longer Suzerain of a CS yet if you check you still are.

 

they can actually fix trade route yields. they were close with the water tile efficiency thing, but they blew it by limiting it to international routes and making trade posts increase efficiency as well, so that you actually don't need to care about the ocean after all as long as you have a few of the posts

 

Improvements (one or more of them) I would suggest for making coastal cities more productive are:

• tiles adjacent to coast in cities placed on coast have increased production
• Sea trade routes going through coastal cities get a minor production from it (+1 and possibly increase with techs)
• Sea trade routes originating from coastal cities get a higher production from it (+2 and possibly increase with techs)

 

The RND bug definitely needs quick attention - I hope they give it the priority of the free gold trade bug of the April patch. (@The Economy - it's not giving +1 movement to ships at all, at least in some circumstances; the patch was supposed to fix the bug where the +1 movement wasn't preserved when the ship was upgraded, but seems to have broken the bonus altogether.)

 

Yeah, I'm assuming/hoping the next patch will be a lot sooner than the last one. My guess is a bug fix (RND) plus simple balance pass (Maori/Lumbermill, coastal cities, etc...).

I wouldn't expect major changes, but more simple fixes, if it ends up being a quicker patch. If they wait another 3-4 months to release it, then we might see some larger items addressed.

 

It's definitely harder to use the new IZs if you were trying to seamlessly stream live, but the power potential of them has increased a bit; it's also not hard to come up with good enough placement solutions on the fly once you've done it a couple times. I hope they keep the IZ rules the same, but I think they should give a look not only to mine/LM/quarry placement, but also just their tech tree upgrade timings. It is pretty obvious that waiting until rocketry for the last +1 is not something many players will stomach. A lot of improvements desperately need it (plantation tops the list) but these three siblings are in direct competition.

I also think they should just be aware of the polder not working with mountains and clarify if that is intentional.

I still think modern era+ naval units need some tweaking too. I'm very happy to have nuke subs not need resources, at least we have a usable ship to spam at the end of the tech tree - but why not make subs themselves oil free too? At least that would make the naval raider line always resource free. (I would actually rather it be destroyer who don't need resources but maybe i'm an armchair fleet admiral who lives in the past)

 

Hasn't this been the case from the beginning? Originally, hills didn't count, either, but then they added them.

 

I'd like to see FXS give the AIplayers on the higher difficulties (eg. era-specific) free housing / amenities boni. This would let them grow their cities larger (therefore picking up more science/culture from population) and also unlock more districts via the population requirements.

In this context I see also additional city maintenance costs for the human player (increasing per number of cities - regardless, whether founded or conquered cities!).

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Originally it was 3 flat land tiles, then they changed it to 3 land tiles. The reason I call out mountains is because natural wonder tiles count as land even if they are graphically mountains. So while code-wise they are distinct, to a regular player there's no reason Kilimanjaro OK but mountain next to it not okay.

IIRC someone here looked at game logs of what cards the AI runs, and basically a big part of why the human is able to overcome the AI so fast is because their entire government is devoted to amenities and housing for their cities, because they seem to mismanage it. If the AI actually used cards like rationalism or serfdom, we would be in big trouble.

 

I'd like to see an alternative to lumber mills. Perhaps a 'natural preserve'. -1 production. +2 gold. +2 culture. Or something.

Create a 'Civil Engineer' to do some of the jobs the Military Engineers does. Let the Civil Engineer create roads when you have masonry and one stone quarry. Railroads later, etc. Expend charges on certain improvements.

And have roads and railroads give you something. Gold, production, culture, loyalty. A little bit of something. The clever folks at Firaxis know all about the roads, but not as much clever Mr Toads.

 

While they did scrap the "connected to capital" mechanic from past games (which, with the advent of the trade route system in BNW, was kind of a relic) I do miss getting a bonus for connecting rails up to every city. If they could extend the trade route efficiency bonus to more stuff, like & on domestic routes, then connecting up cities with rails would become a top priority just for how strong the bonus would be if you have one trader in each city. Alternatively, it could function as a way to help the IZ when you can't utilize aqueducts and dams.

 

The world builder basic mode was definitely a good addition to Civ 6. Hope the advance mode is released in the winter patch or earlier.

 

None , too busy making reveal videos for 3rd expanssion...I hope.

But autumn update speculation would be more likely

 

Ed's teaser probably means they will nerf coastal civs and coastal cities while increasing the damage from hurricanes and increasing the speed at which sea levels rise. Hurricanes will also be removed from the slider that controls disaster intensity.