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

[Dotsworthy]

Civ Vi is pretty stuffed with features already but I would buy a new dlc that expands the diplomacy and government mechanics.

I particularly miss a few things from Civ V. Pledging to protect city states and negotiating peace deals with the AI to stop attacking them. I also miss Military states constantly gifting me units so I don't have to bother building up an army

I also miss ideology. It was a pretty fun mechanic and it made late game diplomacy a game changer. At the moment I still find diplomacy a bit flat in 6. They either love you unconditionally or hate you but don't bother to go to war and instead swallow up city states. Other than keeping an eye on a neighbour with a big army I pay little attention to what the AI are doing.

 

[sonicmyst]

I think diplomatic victory, even after teh recent patch, is way harder (i.e. slower) to get than the others. The "vote to take points away from X" is too powerful

I just wish all allied AI civs not vote against me for diolomatic victory but instead them focusing on increasing their own. Why are we allies but against us becoming the world leader? That does not make sense and it feels very gamey.

 

[sonicmyst]

Updates have been crazy this week. The 2kqa_b branch updated 4 times yesterday, until the late evening. I don't think this is indicative that they are coming to an end though. Aspyr is still working with their internal qa branches and haven't presented anything to 2K yet. Typically when they present to 2K, it means they are close to a finished patch. But as we saw last time, that doesn't mean 2K will accept their presented build. It could go back and forth for several weeks.

There was now an announcement that RF and GS for Switch and IOS will be done this year. So on Aspyr's end they seem to be very very busy.

 

[Ondolindë]

Updates have been crazy this week. The 2kqa_b branch updated 4 times yesterday, until the late evening. I don't think this is indicative that they are coming to an end though. Aspyr is still working with their internal qa branches and haven't presented anything to 2K yet. Typically when they present to 2K, it means they are close to a finished patch. But as we saw last time, that doesn't mean 2K will accept their presented build. It could go back and forth for several weeks.

Is it me or Aspyr is having more Linux updates these past couple of days? They might be having issues there. But, yes, definitely a lot of activity, but, yes, no presentation to 2K yet. Also, what’s the AspyrLegacy branch for?

There was now an announcement that RF and GS for Switch and IOS will be done this year. So on Aspyr's end they seem to be very very busy.

It was truly unexpected. When I saw the IOS update and the Rise & Fall expansion available yesterday on the App Store, I was really surprised. Aspyr is really cracking it. I’m guessing Gathering Storm will be coming just before the end of the year holidays.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Is it me or Aspyr is having more Linux updates these past couple of days? They might be having issues there. But, yes, definitely a lot of activity, but, yes, no presentation to 2K yet. Also, what’s the AspyrLegacy branch for?



It was truly unexpected. When I saw the IOS update and the Rise & Fall expansion available yesterday on the App Store, I was really surprised. Aspyr is really cracking it. I’m guessing Gathering Storm will be coming just before the end of the year holidays.

The Aspyr legacy branch holds the previous patch version for the sake of comparison, I believe.

 

[tigen]

Just working on AI and bugs wouldn't make any money to support continued development of the game.

Improving the quality of the stuff they have sold could help entice more people to buy this game or buy the next thing they want to sell.

 

[shaglio]

There was now an announcement that RF and GS for Switch and IOS will be done this year. So on Aspyr's end they seem to be very very busy.

I wonder if this is one of the "surprises" they were hinting about?

 

[Pietato]

The fixes to the Maori and England are taking too long. I have been delaying my games...

 

[Duuk]

Improving the quality of the stuff they have sold could help entice more people to buy this game or buy the next thing they want to sell.

Except that, outside of a very, very, very tiny and loud vocal minority, the vast majority of the customer base that buys games gives precisely zero concern about "improved AI".

Literally less than 2% of the customer base plays on difficulty levels higher than default. Don't assume that the people that post on Steam or (god forbid) Civfanatics represent even the tiniest fraction of the people that pay the bills. They don't. Go look at the Steam reports for how many people have gotten certain achievements. Less than half have EVER won a game on ANY difficulty level, including Settler.

 

[Gedemon]

Except that, outside of a very, very, very tiny and loud vocal minority, the vast majority of the customer base that buys games gives precisely zero concern about "improved AI".

Literally less than 2% of the customer base plays on difficulty levels higher than default. Don't assume that the people that post on Steam or (god forbid) Civfanatics represent even the tiniest fraction of the people that pay the bills. They don't. Go look at the Steam reports for how many people have gotten certain achievements. Less than half have EVER won a game on ANY difficulty level, including Settler.

"improved AI" is not something clearly defined, we don't all have the same expectation from it.

For example my expectation is to have an AI that can provide an interesting game, not one that can beat me at this or that difficulty level.

Anyway the post you're quoting is about general improvements, not just the AI.

I'm glad people are buying DLC and expansion that allow long-term development which does bring general improvements, that I won't deny, but so far they're not enough to convince me to put any money in them, and if civ6 development was to stop today, I would not buy civ7: too many additions without enough improvements of what already exist in their development cycle.

 

[tigen]

Except that, outside of a very, very, very tiny and loud vocal minority, the vast majority of the customer base that buys games gives precisely zero concern about "improved AI".

Literally less than 2% of the customer base plays on difficulty levels higher than default. Don't assume that the people that post on Steam or (god forbid) Civfanatics represent even the tiniest fraction of the people that pay the bills. They don't. Go look at the Steam reports for how many people have gotten certain achievements. Less than half have EVER won a game on ANY difficulty level, including Settler.

Those stats are interesting. I wonder how much of it is due to tracking players who don't really play... I know a lot of people end up with game collections larger than what they actually have time to play. I don't know if those stats attempt to filter out game owners who barely played (or never played?). I saw something like 83% as the highest percentage for any achievement.

Maybe ~50% of the sales are to people who are just collecting the game or maybe had it gifted to them, then the other 50% (or less) are more serious players. I would call those the actual player base and the reputation of the game still rests on them in the long run. But I'll grant you that only some fraction of even those will really geek out over the game and complain on forums etc. I guess media reviews are pretty forgiving overall.

To me I guess I don't really want to invest a lot of time into a strategy game when the mechanics change dramatically or there are sloppy/buggy mechanics so long after release. (Maybe that's harsh, I get that Firaxis is putting in some serious support, but like others said it feels like more effort on expanding vs. refining.)

 

[Ziad]

It has taken more than 6 years effort for a whole community to make civ5 AI decent at the game without the use of cheats. All for free, and without concern for gameplay paradigms of the average player.

Refining to significant extent in strategy games will almost always fall to the player, and frankly thats not the worst thing. At least then you can shop for what you want.

The reality is that most people play only a few rounds after buying the game, coming back for new updates and features. Effort on making the AI a lot smarter is useless for their bottom line.

This is why the best way to enjoy these games is to set your own goals, challenges, and even some RP.

Or you can become part of the solution and write better AI yourself.

That being said, I understand it when people say they prefer to not use mods to fix issues they find with the game, especially when modders can be overzealous with their tweaks.

 

[Gedemon]

Part of the problem with civ6 is that we don't have the tools to improve it ourselves yet.

 

[Duuk]

Part of the problem with civ6 is that we don't have the tools to improve it ourselves yet.

100% agree. One of the bigger disappointments is that it's actually been a regression in full modability.

With the recent patches, I'm definitely at the sunk-cost-fallacy stage with Civ6. I'm not likely to buy any further expansions, and I'm likely to be skittish about Civ7.

 

[Haig]

I'm having great fun with the game, playing King and Emperor. Sometimes Prince if I want to fool around with weird plans and strategies.

Of course there are things that devs should look at but so it is with the previous games in the franchise too..

What I really want tho is 3rd expansion announcement and the hype, speculation, first looks and mysterious leaks that come with it!

 

[Abaxial]

It's partly the age old problem that you see also with Microsoft products going back to the year dot: The Marketing Dept likes to say "We have new features!" but not "We fixed all the broken stuff!"

 

[Yokel]

I just had an idea, after reading the thread on AI and World Congress. I understand why voting to select WC issues would end up making WC unbalanced, but what if a City State had a bonus that allowed its Suzerain to select one of the issues to vote on?

 

[Karmah]

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.)

uh what ? rainforest are better now.they can be usefull at mercantilism so that leaves the choice between chop or prod Before it was chop now or chop later. Not what I call an interresting choice.

 

[Karmah]

* finish the job on revisiting units upgrade by revisiting impact on UUs. I can't even believe they didn't.Once upon a time there was this strange but fun alternation in upgrades. Some civs like poland received a unit 'in the middle' that requiered hard building in the middle of the gap.Now all the upgrade on horses has rendered them completely useless compared to their counterparts.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Aspyr just updated their "send to 2KQA" builds. Which means the next patch could be as early as next week... or about 1.5 months from now depending on if they have some tenacious bugs.