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

[mmenphis]

FXS updated 2kqa_a yesterday. So they began work on the some hotfix or next patch.

 

[WillowBrook]

2kqa_b updated today, so that's one update to each of the usual test branches in the week since the patch. This is normal behavior if they're planning another patch sometime in the next two months or so.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

2kqa_b updated today, so that's one update to each of the usual test branches in the week since the patch. This is normal behavior if they're planning another patch sometime in the next two months or so.

I don't think they would've started on QA tests so soon. I suspect it is a hotfix.

 

[lotrmith]

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

I'm thinking something along the lines of trade routes also. Trade routes to and from coastal cities should provide significant bonuses, ie +1 food to destinations from coastal cities per fishing boat in the origin coastal city. +1 production to the destination city. More gold yields.

Perhaps even a bonus on successful completion of a trade route that starts, end, or passes through a coastal city in the form of lump gold, maybe lump food, maybe a temporary production boost (10%, limit one)?

Also I don't think it's on the agenda but it would be neat it they added temporary bonus yields to tiles, representing things like surges in wildlife (ie temporary deer, temporary fish, etc). Perhaps a fish market building that allows for fisheries to be built without having to ping Liang around.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

too much gold in game , maintenance of units/buildings should increase drastically
number of cities should have a negative effect that forces the player to think about expanding , at least after a dozen or so
city states bonuses ( not the suzerain bonus, the bonus per envoy ) should not apply to every city , maybe only the nearest , selected by the player or biggest or where the bonus would give the max?
coastal cities would get an indirect buff if gold becomes rare , add some major production bonus to harbor+trade route+IZ combination with a +1 bonus to sea resources if you have factory+shipyard for example
dial down hurricane area and intensity until climate change becomes level3 or so
loyalty should also be looked at , bigger cities having greater loyalty doesnt make sense to me ( at least if they are on another continent or far far away from capital )
triggering late game world wars forcing all players to go to war
pillaging in early eras should not yield so much yields. it is at the moment basically free technologies/culture if you can raid districts even if the target is not advanced as the raider. maybe at a condition on yields depending on the difference between science/culture level of attacker and defender?
building improvements on tiles should negate the bonuses from wonders/buildings like lumberhill on rainforest to chicken itza or the stadium bonus etc
no upkeep units is a very dangerous idea. not a big fan of such units. spamming potantial is too high.
venetian arsenal/terra cotta should not provide their bonus to later era units
give military engineers more options , like repair district/tile and also why can we move great people from city to city so fast but no other units , and why are they immortal , currently they are being abused as scouts, maybe give them zero tile visibility once outside of city areas?
happiness in cities should include preparedness to disasters
more techs/culture to later eras please, a lot more , currently due to too many cities and city state bonuses etc after you reach modern era , a few turns later you are already finishing the tech/culture tree , doesnt help with the enjoyment or the feeling of accomplishment

 

[WillowBrook]

I don't think they would've started on QA tests so soon. I suspect it is a hotfix.

Isn't a hotfix a type of patch? They're QA testing *something*.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Isn't a hotfix a type of patch? They're QA testing *something*.

Yeah, a hotfix is typically just 2 or 3 line items, not 12 pages. I'm moderating expectations here.

 

[WillowBrook]

Yeah, a hotfix is typically just 2 or 3 line items, not 12 pages. I'm moderating expectations here.

Good point.

Edit: They just updated the Mac internal QA branch.

I hope this points to a RNDY hot fix - I haven't played England with GS yet. But I would be surprised if they get anything out in less than a week from now.

 

[oSiyeza]

Yeah, a hotfix is typically just 2 or 3 line items, not 12 pages. I'm moderating expectations here.

I expect they will add the RND fix and tone down the AI dedication to aid projects and also the received money from them too.

Then, i expect no additional updates for some months. But any additional balance fix or bug ironing would be great.

 

[Smity2k1]

According to a recent popular mod on the Steam workshop, it isn't just a RND bug but a but that affects all districts/buildings that provide +experience to units constructed in that city. I haven't done any tests to prove or disprove it, but I installed the mod last night and fired up a game.

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

I would like to be able to cancel trade routes. And then next turn, re-route it. Simple as that.

Sometimes I'll have a settler a turn or two out, and get the notice to either keep my trader going to the same route or go to a new place. And if I want this trade route to go to this new upcoming city, I have to constantly Next Turn it until my settler is built and then wait until the settler gets into City position.

It would also be a huge buff for one of the weakest abilities in the game: Wilhelmina's leader ability. All it provides is +1 loyalty for domestic trade routes. Being able to reroute a couple trade routes to a newly conquered/founded city would make this ability so much more viable and interesting without being OP.

I've been wanting this since R&F. I think it's time to make it happen!

 

[acluewithout]

Well. If I was putting together a punch list for FXS, this is what I’d like to see.

• Mountain Wonders give Campuses and Holy Site adjacencies like they’re normal mountains - so confusing they don’t.
• Get rid of Campus adjacencies for Geothermal Vents - too powerful.
• Polder placement rules include mountain tiles.
• Give Liang’s Reinforced Materials promotion a +% for Repairing Pillaged Districts.
• Upgrading Battleships to Fleets and Armadas should also buff their AA, and upgrading Aircraft Carriers should increase their Airplane Capacity.
• Remove “Recruit Partisans”. (We don’t need more reasons not to build Neighborhoods.)
• Get rid of the Professional Army Card, or make it just not discount upgrade costs (maybe the card buffs experience instead).
• Give the Cree a free starting scout.
• Give Netherlands a +% for building Harbours.
• Get rid of the inherent gold from Markets (maybe markets buff gold from oasis and luxes instead) (nerfing markets could cut down gold generally and also buff harbours and coastal cities).
• Get rid of the IZs mine adjacencies (but keep all the other adjacencies) (it’s the buff Lumbermills and Quarries are begging for). Maybe give IZs an adjacency for Harbours.
• Give LMs a buff for rivers.
• Let Military Engineers build roads without spending charges.
• Fix RND +1 Movement bug (the new bug, not the old bug). Maybe let England’s +% boost extend to IZs, not just IZ buildings, but English factories pollute more.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

A 2kqa build updated again.

Another interesting development: Aspyrlegacy was updated and the description changed to include IOS platforms.

 

[WillowBrook]

Another interesting development: Aspyrlegacy was updated and the description changed to include IOS platforms.

I read the change as removing "for iOS version" from the description.

 

[Jkchart]

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)

Absolutely. Just eliminate the resource requirements for the naval raider line. Gives us the ability to create SOME sort of modern fleet when we are resource poor. Resource-poor nations need some sort of way to project military power to be able to acquire more resources. Eliminating Infantry resource requirements (or at least maintenance) would help as well.

 

[Sostratus]

Absolutely. Just eliminate the resource requirements for the naval raider line. Gives us the ability to create SOME sort of modern fleet when we are resource poor. Resource-poor nations need some sort of way to project military power to be able to acquire more resources. Eliminating Infantry resource requirements (or at least maintenance) would help as well.

The ideal solution would, of course, be some kind of world resource market, where you can get at minimum peace time access for a price, but that may be a civ7 solution.
Your reasoning is exactly mine - if you don't have oil (and you only find out where it is at the same tech level as infantry and subs) then you cannot build the military to go get oil. Whereas niter is revealed, used in muskets and bombards, but there's still iron and horse units running around in the industrial. The system is good but I do think oil should be revealed sooner @ scientific theory or something (just unusable until refining.)

 

[King of Prussia]

Removing oil requirement for infantry would be pretty good. Too many units need it. I am mixed on MI needing it as well. Planes no longer need it, but other units do. Subs for some reason require it while other ships in the line dont.

Resource RNG is still frustrating. Playing the small continents map, i was on a fairly large continent with Hungary and part of Moari. There wasn't a single niter on it. I dont recall there being that many iron or horses either. There was some uranium, aluminum and coal. There was plenty of oil on or around my continent on adjacent islands.

I feel its almost mandatory to have Sweden in the game for the extra competitions. They have 2 of the competitions that reward oil and uranium, making the RNG element in the game less punishing.(rewards skill for having a good empire as well). Perhaps i need to play on a higher resource setting.

With how poor resource distribution is, part of me wonders if resource requirements for troops should just be removed outright, and any strategic resource instead provides some nationwide boost(including the troops). There are other games that do this, and i think its a decent system. I even modded another game to make this happen. It is frustrating building an army just to have you be unable to upgrade a lot of troops for large swaths of the game. For the early game, you can try trading if someone friendly has it, but in the late game with maintenance, that isn't as practical. in the game above, i was stuck with legions until i could get all the oil around me to make infantry.

i like variety from game to game. I like unexpected twists. I cant say i really enjoy the lottery that is strategic resources. The more i play, the more annoyed i get.

 

[Stilgar08]

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.

it never gets old... Wait... I was wrong - it does. And especially so after the problems have been acknowledged by FXS.

Concerning the hotfix I wouldn't expect too much. Its a hotfix after all... Maybe this WB issue I've seen on the forums and RND not working as intended More would be just a pleasant surprise...

 

[kaspergm]

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)

Wouldn't it be appropriate to look into the fact that Subs can attack land units and cities also?

In fact, I think the whole naval unit system needs a serious balance check. Am I the only one who think that Galley vs. Quadrireme is completely off, for instance? I was having an England game the other day, figured I'd spam some early galleys to send out. Two galleys encounter one barb quadrireme. Both end up deep in red health before that one quadrireme is taken care off. And can't heal outside friendly territory. Have to use 10 turns to sail them back home and hope no barb archer/galley/quadrireme passes by, or both ships will be dead.

Of course there's also the issue of Ironclads effectively ending the melee unit upgrade line at Caravels, because running one or two Ironclads will basically cause entire global warming by themself.

 

[Sostratus]

Wouldn't it be appropriate to look into the fact that Subs can attack land units and cities also?

My idea was that destroyers can take coastal cities, so making naval melee resource free would preserve the most capability (kill naval units, see subs, take cities.) And at the time, nuke subs needed uranium so it seemed like a smaller change. But then I thought, subs are great bang for your buck, and it would be the smallest change since ironclads still need coal.

In fact, I think the whole naval unit system needs a serious balance check. Am I the only one who think that Galley vs. Quadrireme is completely off, for instance? I was having an England game the other day, figured I'd spam some early galleys to send out. Two galleys encounter one barb quadrireme. Both end up deep in red health before that one quadrireme is taken care off. And can't heal outside friendly territory. Have to use 10 turns to sail them back home and hope no barb archer/galley/quadrireme passes by, or both ships will be dead.

Of course there's also the issue of Ironclads effectively ending the melee unit upgrade line at Caravels, because running one or two Ironclads will basically cause entire global warming by themself.

It's awful. I really wish they would bring back the Galleass. Quads just show why ranged units almost all have melee strength 10 lower than ranged strength, which itself is usually 5 below a melee attacking unit's strength in that era. Quads being able to get a free hit at 25 without taking damage in exchange is crazy strong and that's exactly why ranged units ruled in civ5. But on the sea, I think they envision naval ranged to be the powerful capital ships, except as I just explained, having high ranged factor and melee factor in one ship like naval ranged does is a recipe for utter dominance. It's a very different dynamic to land combat. IMO ironclads should also be a radical change when they come out, maybe that means some +10 defense ability, idk. But ironclads should mess you up good to justify their coal use. A battleship has the same melee factor as an ironclad but a devastating 70 str ranged attack for the same 1 coal cost.